Summer of Love
by Pat Foley
Summary: Spock's first summer break from Starfleet Academy involves an interesting learning experience as he takes a part time job as a session musician. Chapter 6 up. In Progress.
1. Chapter 1

**Summer of Love**

**By**

**Pat Foley**

**Chapter 1**

The mini-bus wound its way through the streets of San Francisco as if it was unsure of its welcome. Dusty and faded, the van appeared derelict. Its undercarriage and failing shocks sagged under instruments, amps, a summer's worth of luggage, and the weight of six band members. It hesitated at a turning, stalled briefly, re-started with a back-fire and a puff of exhaust, then made its way laboriously up a hill, the motor hitching a bit. Finally with a burst of speed it accelerated through the signposts marking the campus entrance for StarFleet Academy.

"Wake up, Richard," Chad said, poking the unconscious drummer. "Spock's getting out here."

"Five more minutes," Richard muttered, his head turned into the side of the seat as if on a pillow.

The bus halted with a jerk and squeal of braking systems just before a checkpoint.

A Starfleet M.P. came over to the driver's side of the unorthodox vehicle. "Hey, you can't bring that thing in here."

"We're not parking," Drew Cobb politely said. The band's lead guitarist when he wasn't playing chauffer, he was their best spokesman. "We're just dropping someone off."

"Unless you have a visitor's pass, you aren't authorized. Appointments for tours are made—"

"Richard, would you wake up!" Chad said. "It's the attack of the toy soldiers here. And the natives are restless."

"I'm going to have to ask you to move this … this **vehicle** immediately," the M.P said, staring in outrage as the shabby van's motor hitched and belched more fumes.

"Keep your hair on," Finn McNeary, their bass player, riding shotgun in the copilot's seat complained. "We've got one of your own here. If you give us a minute-"

"I don't think that can be true," the M.P. said. "And you're blocking traffic. Please turn around, or pull aside and -"

"What's going on up there?" Captain Christopher Pike, resplendent in dress whites, stuck his head out of his aircar, first in line behind them.

"Sorry, sir," the M.P. said. "This vehicle is unauthorized. No transponder, no decal and we had to intercept –"

The side panel door of the van opened, and a figure dressed in jeans, a t-shirt emblazoned with the name of a rock club, covered by a somewhat grubby sweatshirt, struggled clumsily past the semi-conscious and grumbling drummer. "I said five **minutes**," Richard growled, kicking out as Spock leapt over the drummer's flailing feet. He somehow managed to keep to his own as he half exited, half fell out of the vehicle.

"There's **no** unauthorized personnel – " the M.P. said.

"I am authorized," the former passenger claimed, as he was passed a duffle and an instrument case from various hands inside the vehicle. The bags and clothing, the air wafting from the van carried the sweet herbal tinge of euphorics. The M.P. snorted and waved at the smoke before his face, half bus exhaust, half something even more illegal.

"Fat chance," the M.P. said. "I ought to arrest you right now for-"

"I have a pass," Spock put a hand in his coat pocket, the jacket's hood inadvertently falling back. "I'm –"

"Spock?" Captain Christopher Pike came out of his aircar. "Is that you?"

Spock shrugged his duffle and lyre case over his shoulder and turned. His hair, tousled by the falling hood, fell back into perfect Vulcan lines. But three months since his last regulation Fleet haircut, it also fell into his eyes and over his ears. He blinked and shook the bangs away from obscuring his vision. "Yes, sir. **Captain**, sir."

"You know this-" the M.P. said in astonishment to the Captain.

Spock handed over his pass to the M.P. "Cadet Spock. Returning sophomore."

"What the hell?" Pike said. "What have you been doing all summer, Spock? And **why**?" He looked from the Vulcan's clothes to the shabby van, stacked with boxes and cases, and its non-regulation occupants.

"Well," Spock tilted his head in a Vulcan shrug, belatedly trying and failing to straighten clothes wrinkled from hours of travel in the cramped van into something of Fleet neatness. "I had to eat. Captain. Sir."

"Eat?" Pike said, dumbfounded.

"Eat, sir." Spock said, reasonable as only a Vulcan can be.

Horns blared behind the vehicle.

"Sir, **please**," the M.P. begged.

"He's clear," Pike said. His gaze focused back on the shabby van, "but these-"

"Colleagues of mine," Spock clarified.

"Colleagues?" Pike said, disbelieving.

"Friends," Spock added.

"Hey, Junior? Are you **sure** you want to play this gig?" Chad stuck his head out past the still comatose Richard. "This scene is a **drag**."

"Yes. Thank you for the transportation," Spock said, gesturing them to go. "But the M.P. is correct in that –"

"Hey, we're leaving," Drew said.

"Great summer, Spock," Finn added.

"You take care, Junior," Chad said, waving. "And keep **cool** baby. In spite of Captain Hard Lip here," he added. "We'll catch you later." He poked his seatmate. "Richard, wake up and say goodbye to Junior."

"Yeah, yeah," Richard muttered. "Later."

"Bye, Spock," Finn said, and Drew tooted the horn in salute.

The van wheeled around, and vanished in a puff of exhaust that left Pike and the M.P. choking. Even Spock coughed the noxious fumes out once before holding his breath until the air cleared.

"At attention," Pike snapped to him. "And I want an explanation, Cadet."

Spock frowned as if at a loss and belatedly straightened, looking straight ahead, Vulcan innocent, in spite of the hair, the clothes, the sweet scent of herbal euphorics. "An explanation, sir?"

"Sir, if you would-" the M.P. said. "There's a line forming. We have to clear-"

"Yes," Pike said. "Not here," he added to Spock. "My office, seventeen hundred hours. In **uniform** cadet. And with a haircut." He headed for his aircar.

"Yes, sir," Spock sighed, looking almost wistfully after the van now climbing in the sky toward the Los Angeles flight path.

"Junior?" Pike turned back, brows raised, still disbelieving.

Spock said nothing, merely returned his gaze to front and forward and stood at attention while Pike shook his head and made a placating gesture to the nervous M.P. He crossed to his vehicle, giving Spock one more skeptical glance before flying off.

"I wouldn't want to be in your shoes come seventeen hundred," the M.P. gloated in slow relish.

Spock's shoulders dropped in relief as Pike's vehicle disappeared. He then panned his gaze from the M.P.s feet to his own grubby sneakers. "They would not fit. Nor is my present attire regulation-"

"Get out of here," the M.P growled.

Spock shrugged, human style this time, and picked up his duffle and lyre case. He slowly headed off to his dorm, his clothes and hair still redolent of outgassed euphorics trailing behind him in the air, drawing more than one curious glance from the uniformed and bandbox neat cadets filling the walkways around him.

His summer of music, and of love, was fading fast behind him like San Francisco's morning fog burning off in mid-day sun.

But it **had** been a fascinating summer.

_To be continued…_


	2. Chapter 2

**Summer of Love**

**By**

**Pat Foley**

**Chapter 2**

Spock headed toward his dormitory, taking in his changed surroundings. Earth was Earth everywhere on planet, of course, and he had begun referring to it by that name now, rather than the more alien referent Terra. But the military styled grounds, the cadets drilling on the fields, the uniforms and snapped salutes, seemed more than light-years apart from his summer's existence: traveling with a five-member band from one venue to another, working evenings and nights, sleeping during the day, switching gigs every few days, playing in converted warehouses in gritty industrial districts that had gone to seed, at local fairs or in college clubs.

He passed through streams of uniformed, rigidly postured cadets, a lone radical in a sea of military decorum.

Some fellow cadets stared at him, but not because he was Vulcan, not this time. They stared at him for his clothes, his hair, his unmilitary posture. A few acquaintances, fellow classmates, called his name. Spock nodded, ignoring their astonished looks. Though he was out of practice at it. Throughout the summer, hardly anyone had given his looks more than a second, curious glance. Other factors had been more important in his assimilation to his past group.

He rather missed that acceptance. Even as perhaps undistinguished as that peer group had been, by perhaps his older traditional standards. Compared to his Vulcan or Starfleet lives.

He hadn't joined an A-list band. Not one that always played huge venues, with tens of thousands of seats filled. Not that Spock didn't consider his group technically proficient. He'd come to understand they were among the most in-demand session musicians. The band usually spent their summer touring with A-list acts as high paid back-up musicians. But this year, their professional session schedule hadn't merged well with their touring offers. They had enough original material of their own. So they'd opted to nix professional offers to tour instead as relative unknowns to their audiences. Every gig had been a test, an oddly exhilarating one, where they had to go out and win the audiences with compelling beats and licks, sweeping the crowds up into an emotional and physical experience. They had been successful. Their crowds were always larger on their second and third nights, due solely to word of mouth and even some repeat business.

Spock had found it fascinating. Perhaps even somewhat addicting. The roar of the crowd. The cheers and applause at the end of a successful set. The adrenalin rush of stepping onto a hot, smoky stage before a crowd high on euphorics and exuberance. The crash of the music. The oneness with his bandmates as they played.

And that was just on stage. Off had been an even more illuminating, encompassing experience.

Even now, he wondered. Could he come back? Leave that behind?

Returning to the Academy had become a real, ongoing question in his mind, even now that he had ostensibly returned.

He could so easily have slipped, even disappeared, into a life where he could fit, questions of Vulcan/human identity aside. He could do it still.

That had not, had never been an option on Vulcan. Nor even quite as much as he had hoped it might be in StarFleet, uniformed and disciplined into a cog in their organization. He was still more of an alien to his fellow Starfleet members than a ubiquitous cadet. Most of the time.

But performing, on the road, it was about how he played, not who was behind the instrument, not what parts of him were human or Vulcan.

Failing to return, however, would have been an indulgence. And Vulcans did not believe in indulgences. They believed in duty. And musician or not, he was still a Vulcan.

So he'd returned to StarFleet.

For now.

But almost now, with StarFleet on trial.

He walked through the campus, seeing it with new eyes. One potential life contrasted with another newer, never foreseen one. As well as with the Vulcan life his father had designed for him. His mother had been right in some respects. He had really **had** no idea of how easily he could fit into opportunities other than Starfleet. Though she had been thinking of other educational opportunities – the Sorbonne, Oxford, Harvard. She hadn't been thinking of his playing derelict clubs and fairgrounds for uncertain takings, split five ways.

He suspected his Nobel and Zi Magni winning mother would disapprove of such a life as stringently as his father would. If perhaps for different reasons.

And yet. He had almost had to force himself out of that van. He wanted to be flying back to Los Angeles. He could get an apartment. His work was good enough to pay his way.

Hardly a career for a son of Surak.

Inconceivable how the latter could still have so much attraction for a logical, disciplined Vulcan raised by very over-achieving parents. One for whom music lessons had been merely one of a multitude of encompassing disciplines that had filled his days. He had been expected to learn it. To master it. Never to actually use it for more than an occasional rare diversion.

And yet … now he could … almost… seriously consider it. As a career. Part of him leapt up and begged for that option.

Most of him denied those hopes with a disciplined Vulcan disapproval.

Faintly to his ears came the sound of cadets marching on the drilling grounds. Of the roar of cadets cheering their squads on in hand-to-hand practice.

Vulcans had even less approval for all this.

He was … torn. Lost. His heart back in a shabby airvan, loaded down with instruments in worn cardboard cases and dog-eared music sheets.

He passed the Student Placement Office, where all this had begun, months ago. He looked at it, a different person than he had been. A changed person at any rate. Was he so human, such a child still, that his plans could be derailed by a single summer of admitted…indulgence. Was he as undisciplined as that - as his father no doubt feared?

And yet, it had fulfilled a need in him nothing else had ever satisfied. Could he give that up?

He turned away from the Placement Office. Odd how life experiences could turn on such minor, uncertain twists of fate. If he hadn't applied here. If he hadn't needed funds. Would he have ever had such experiences? Be poised on the cusp of a decision that in spite of all his upbringing, begged him to consider a life apart from duty and logic?

He let out his breath in a very unVulcan sigh.

He had made a commitment to Starfleet. He **had** returned, however torn. But whether he stayed or left to try another life, Vulcans **were** long-lived. What would a year, or two be, in such a lifespan? Why shouldn't he try it? He was here on Earth to find himself. What could his parents say that would be worse than what his father had already done? He already knew what his father thought of him. Could any decision he made now make things worse between them? Would his mother deny him too? He didn't think she would have approved of his activities this past summer. But in spite of that he still thought she wouldn't reject him for them.

But what would T'Pau say?

He squirmed a bit at that. Inwardly.

Well, he would have to see Captain Pike this evening. Perhaps that would also be a turning point.

Not unlike what had happened when he had visited the Placement Center. Looking for paying work without thinking he'd find another life. One that beckoned with the siren call of music. His fingers twitched in memory, not for computer keys or the controls of a ship but for piano keyboards, instrument strings. The rhythms in his head not of drills and booted feet but of music. The cheers of the crowds filled his head, not the call of drill sergeants.

He missed it, he realized. Already. He wanted it back. Already.

And only a few months ago, he had never even conceived of such a life. He'd been seeking something else entirely.

x x x

"Applications are to be submitted online," droned the unlucky woman responsible for the Starfleet Academy Placement Center, seeing a cadet-shaped shadow cross her computer screen, regardless of the bearer's soundless approach. "You'll be notified via email of internships, placements and potential positions."

"I submitted an application 12.4 standard days ago," Spock said. "And I have received no reply."

The attendant sighed and recited by rote more of the standard speech. "Placements are offered depending on available—"

"I hold an A6 computer rating," Spock clarified.1

Her head rose up from her myopic focus on the screen, impressed in spite of, or perhaps because of years of exposure to questionable undergraduate accomplishments. "Well! An A6!" Seeing her visitor was a young Vulcan, she blinked rapidly, as if to clear her vision. "Well, but still! Even for faculty that's exceptional. I'm surprised there hasn't been—"

"My name is Spock," the visitor said patiently, stemming the sea of flustered words.

Dismayed that he'd somehow entrusted any aspect of his future to this oddly emotional person, Spock approached the desk. "Perhaps you could check my application?"

"Spock? Spock." She turned back to her computer, less flustered looking away from those dark eyes and back at the prosaic flow of data across her screen.

"Yes! Here it is. **But**…," the matronly woman frowned a little. "You're a little young, aren't you, dearie?" She pushed her old fashioned spectacles off her face to better scrutinize her applicant's features. "A **first** year cadet," she clarified with some disapproval. Putting her glasses back on, she peered again at the computer screen. "Just starting your second semester," she added pointedly. "First year cadets are **never** placed in internships or extra-curricular positions. It's against policy."

"But I've placed into many post-graduate courses in certain subjects," Spock said, a betraying touch of urgency creeping into his voice, regardless of Vulcan control.

"But cadets are supposed to concentrate on acclimating to the StarFleet culture and environment their first year." She sat back with finality, pushing her spectacles back to perch on the crown of her head. "Seeking additional employment, outside of any class-required internships and fellowships is not recommended for first year students." She gestured at a pile of brochures on her table. "It's all in the freshman prospectus, dearie."

"I understand," Spock said. "But in placement, as opposed to strict chronology, I'm not precisely a first year cadet."

Unimpressed by such hairsplitting, she shrugged, then made a belated attempt to catch her dislodged glasses, which Spock rescued from crashing to the floor.

"Thank you. But don't you think you'd better concentrate on your studies? There's always next year to start internships and work-study appointments. There's plenty of time for that."

"I have the extra time," Spock said. "And in fact, could use the extra income." An edge crept into his voice as he mentally reviewed his limited finances.

"Oh dear. Dearie me." She frowned at this wrinkle. "But you have your allotment, don't you?" she asked kindly. "Your freshman expenses should all be covered."

Spock sighed a little at this. "Not...quite. StarFleet standard issue perhaps might be generally sufficient. For standard cadets."

"Yes, well. Perhaps," she allowed, reviewing him, not in a nasty way, but as if he'd forced her to acknowledge he might not be **quite** standard. "Still," she gestured at her computer terminal, "I'm afraid I've nothing now that will accept a first year cadet. Next year, with your computer rating, I'll be sure to –"

"I really would prefer something now," Spock said firmly, striving to keep his face as expressionless as a Vulcan would and staring her down imperatively.

Transfixed out of her normal convictions by Vulcan determinism, she forgot her arguments. "I'll look around for you."

Spock hesitated, reluctant to leave his tentative future in these doubtful hands. But it seemed he had no choice. "Thank you."

"Have you checked the student boards?" she asked, in sudden inspiration. "There is tutoring-"

"Yes, thank you," Spock said hastily, forcing himself not to wince, and backed out.

The problem with tutoring, Spock reflected as he scanned the student boards later, with no more promising result than he had previously, was that - A6 computer rating or not - no Fleet upperclassman would consent to be tutored by a raw plebe. However gifted. Next year, he might get clients. This year - well, he'd tried. Appointments from freshman he could have in plenty. But it went against his ethics to charge his fellow plebes. Not when he'd had numerous questions on Terran life answered for him by his classmates, questions to his mind far more complex and confusing than the simple direct problems in math, physics or computer science with which his peers occasionally struggled.

And he resisted tutoring for another reason. Part of him refused to accept his coming all the way from Vulcan to Terra, from the VSA to Starfleet Academy, to take up a teaching position, even a part time, one-on-one session. He didn't think it was just because teaching was what his mother did. But he'd estranged his father to avoid that role at the Vulcan Science Academy.

He was too stubborn.

Walking through campus on his way to another class, he considered whether he'd made his case strongly enough to the woman who ran the Fleet Placement Office. A woman whose speech and rounded body and even her fragrance – she had the odor of the tomato soup she ate for lunch at her desk – might fit the Terran definition of motherly as he understood the fictional stereotype. Except that his human mother had a sweet smile, but an equally compelling frown. She could sing like an angel choir, and speak soothing words, but also possessed a sharp tongue and a sometimes sharper hand. One he had occasionally felt the flat side of, growing up. Motherly was a confusing concept for him, given neither Vulcan women nor his own career oriented human mother fit the traditional Terran stereotype.

He sighed a little in memory of that.

He had not been a perfect child. She had not been a perfect mother.

He suspected his mother was not entirely pleased with him now. He did message her once a week. She'd negotiated that requirement from him before he'd left Vulcan. And she replied in kind. But she answered no more than that, even when he had, at first, occasionally messaged more. After a time or two, he understood and was careful not to expect more. He'd been determined to manage this test on his own anyway. It was wrong to trespass further on limits he hadn't thought had existed.

But it left him without even that conventional resource, even if he had been willing to approach it. At least, so he supposed. And he was not seeking more. He wished, was determined to make it on his own.

The problem was exactly what he had told the placement woman. He'd been told before he had come to Terra, that the stipend for undergraduate cadets at StarFleet Academy would cover his expenses. He had been given to understand such was typical for a military academy. He'd brought enough personal funds to cover the incidentals of his travel and some settling in expenses, but aware of his father's disapproval, he'd taken no more than absolutely necessary from his accounts on Vulcan. He wanted to be self-sufficient in his choice. Vulcans were self-sufficient. It was part of his clan history. Part of his father's character. He wouldn't be less than that, himself.

What he hadn't calculated was that his stipend was standard but that he wasn't, in ways that stretched his inelastic stipend past its boundaries. His post-graduate seminars required more expensive materials, beyond what his first year stipend could cover. His personal expenses had included more and warmer clothing. He'd been given a single dorm room, in deference to his Vulcan requirements for privacy, where his stipend assumed a shared double. It left him short of funds, even the first semester, and the second was even worse. His more standard classmates had some small amounts left over for the minor diversions even Fleet plebes could avail themselves of during free time – a non-reconstituted meal, an evening's entertainment. Whereas he was actually covering some Fleet expenses out of personal funds that were rapidly dwindling to extinction.

Standard issue being not quite standard enough for him.

He assumed it was an oversight – bureaucracy was notoriously inefficient everywhere. He'd chosen to become a cog in a larger Starfleet machine. No doubt a conference session with his advisor would set it right. But he was…embarrassed at the necessity. He had achieved the goal of being a Fleet cadet, and having managed that, he didn't quite want to call attention to himself. Emphasize his differences. He preferred to be considered the same as everyone else. Wanted that. And that meant finding a way out of this problem himself.

Particularly since he had come to understand that there were perhaps as many Fleet officials as opposed to his entrance as those who had favored it – and those largely for political reasons.

So he had more than one reason to hesitate asking for special treatment.

He really didn't want that. Not a gift of funds, at any rate. But surely the chance to earn some wasn't too much to ask. Though it looked as if he might have to seek opportunities outside of Fleet-sanctioned ones. And how well would that be tolerated? No, better to seek a Fleet sanctioned one first.

He had more time, as a Fleet cadet, than he had ever had as a student on Vulcan. And there he'd worked multiple internships in clan holdings. Why couldn't he have a part time job here?

He debated his options while he walked on to his next class, forgoing the mess hall, where a reconstituted lunch awaited.

Meals had presented another unforeseen problem. He had anticipated no issue with Terran food. His mother being human, and in possession of a large Terran-style garden on Vulcan, he was quite familiar with Terran foodstuffs.

What he had failed to calculate was that much of what Terrans actually consumed was comprised solely of overly processed compounds reconstituted in automated food processors. Elements that had as much 'life' in them as the created fiber clothing of his uniforms. He had been appalled. Even Vulcans' own space faring vehicles carried a large enough conservatory and growing banks so that each crewmember on board had a portion of their food composed of raw vegetables and fruits, just picked, really fresh, with their life force still at full. Like the foods from his mother's gardens, always picked just before being prepared in a meal. Often the picking being one of his chores. He'd been dismayed at how unsatisfactory the processed versions were in comparison.

He had done his best to subsist wholly on commissary food. But it hadn't been sufficient. Since the humans around him seemed unaffected, he had come to realize it must be yet another Vulcan difference. Some essential life force that Vulcans required from their diet that the reconstituted elements in human reconstructed foods failed to provide. While he explored and researched this lack, he was forced to budget himself to purchase a certain amount of fresh food from the various 'bum boat' carts that circled the Fleet complex. He had time before the third year requirement, where he'd be expected to survive a full six months only on reconstituted 'ship's fare' with not so much as a fresh rose petal to relieve it. So he had time to discipline himself to this requirement, or to find some acceptable substitute for it. But meanwhile, he was forced to make up the shortfall, for this and other unexpected expenses with his own purchases. It wasn't time he lacked so as much as funds.

He took to haunting the employment office, just to ensure that the woman running it didn't forget his request. She was human, after all. He knew from personal experience that humans could be forgetful. But each time he poked his head in the office, she shook her head.

After ten days he retrenched his aspirations. His second semester's tuition, board and extras left an even larger debit balance in his accounts, above and beyond his standard issue stipend.

And Spring brought additional rain and fog that seemed to affect him more after the long winter than it had when he'd first arrived in the fall, then warmed and surfeit of Eridani's sun.

He was cold. Perpetually damp in San Francisco's fogs. Increasingly hungry, because he still hadn't isolated the missing element that made him even less interested in commissary food, but that even the fresh food in the bumboat carts surrounding the Academy could not seem to provide in the quantity that he could afford of them. For even though fresh, in the sense of not being reconstituted, the items generally weren't just picked, really fresh, like on Vulcan, moments before they were eaten. So it required more of them to equal really fresh food. And whatever surplus of such elements he'd had in reserve when he'd first come from Vulcan, he seemed to be hovering toward depletion now.

He was beginning to consider whether his father might have been right. Or perhaps his mother had been correct. Maybe he couldn't subsist on StarFleet standard issue. But Terra had many options. Starfleet was not the only one. Maybe StarFleet would never be right for him. He researched other schools. But Cambridge in Boston was even colder. Paris damp and cheerless in winter. Oxford and Cambridge too. On the other hand, what was the point of coming to Terra only to seek institutions in a climate the same as Vulcan? And as for stipends, grants and scholarships, he'd have to apply to each to see what he could obtain. And so far he resisted taking that step, tacit admission that he'd made a miscalculation.

He was stubborn. He wanted StarFleet still. He didn't want to admit to Sarek that he had failed.

But he was soundly considering whether perhaps he had been in error after all. Whether he could adapt, or adjust to life on cold, damp, Terra, where raincoats seemed to be a way of life, where children lived on lifeless reconstituted food apparently satisfied, even as he hungered, where his classes involved warfare and tactics as much as diplomacy and science, and where he spent at least part of his days engaged in hand-to-hand combat and his nights dealing with physical hazing attempts, that if were not sanctioned by authorities were also not prevented.

It wasn't quite what he expected. What he had researched.

He didn't mind the classes. He even found them interesting, so far as that went.

But being hungry and cold was sapping his resolve.

He was deep enough in despondent ruminations that not only did he trudge past the placement office without checking in, he didn't hear its occupant call after him until he noted some odd expressions on those passing him, before belatedly recognizing his name.

"Oh, dearie! Dearie! Spock!"

He turned, his face flushing chartreuse at her address. But those that heard apparently were familiar enough with her speech patterns that they just gave him what he recognized now as a commiserative look as he turned around.

"Yes?" he asked forbiddingly, aware of passerbys' piqued interest.

"I may have something for you," she said. "You do play, don't you?"

"Play?" he said, his face contorting into Vulcan sternness at this frivolous accusation.

"Music. Your curriculum vitae. It indicates—"

"Oh," he said in relief. "Yes. Quite. But what—"

"The Vulcan lyre? I can't be sure of the translation—"

"I play the Vulcan lyre," Spock affirmed.

"And you have one?"

"Yes," Spock said, mystified. He actually hadn't removed it from his case since he'd arrived.

"Well!" she said in satisfaction. "Well, you are in luck!"

Spock gritted his teeth in impatience at this lack of factual communication. "Of what good fortune are you speaking?"

"Someone is looking for a Vulcan lyrist."

"Someone?" he asked warily. "Who would know that a Vulcan who played the lyre was here in Starfleet?"

She consulted a printed fiche. "Dearie, the request was forwarded from the Federation Council Legate through the StarFleet Civilian Liaison office."

"Not from the Vulcan Embassy on Terra?" he frowned in suspicion, wary of his compatriots. Unsure of what measures Sarek might take to bring him back to Vulcan, he had stayed far away from Vulcan Embassies. He didn't quite expect to be kidnapped and returned home by force. But he didn't want to take the risk.

"Not this request. I don't know what you're bothered about," she added, preceding him into her office and sitting behind the desk. "There aren't that many Vulcans on Terra. You're known to be one of them."

"I have joint Terran citizenship," Spock said.

"But also a Vulcan exit visa on your Federation passport."

"Logical," Spock muttered, still uncomfortable with that.

"And being that Starfleet considers it good public relations to foster its multi-cultural image, you've received permission to pursue this. In **spite** of being a freshman cadet." Seeing he was still dubious, she added. "It's just playing music, dearie."

"I had anticipated," Spock said, not happy with this offer, "That with my computer skills-"

"I know it's not computer science, or astrophysics research, or military tech. But no matter how skilled, you're still just a plebe. And that it isn't technical at least let them give you permission for this. After all, _how hard can it be to play music, even for a freshman plebe_, is what I imagine they're thinking. Letting you pursue this is good public relations for them. And not too much effort for you. If you **can** play."

Spock let out a held breath. It wasn't what he'd expected or wished for – certainly not a position that would use his best skills. But perhaps all he could expect as a Vulcan on Terra was a request for this uniquely Vulcan skill.

"I can play," he affirmed. "Is… is this a recurring position?" he asked, half hopeful.

"Well, no, dearie. I imagine just a one shot thing."

Spock let out a slight sigh at that.

"But money's money, right?" she added in a rare burst of practicality. "And union scale for a session musician may not be what you'd get as an A6 rated computer specialist. But it isn't bad. At least it's something. A start."

"Affirmative," Spock allowed, glancing over the employment agreement, and resigning himself to it. "Where must I go?"

She handed him a fiche. On it was the address of a recording studio in Los Angeles.

"Thank you," Spock said, blinking at this odd twist in his employment aspirations.

"Good luck, Spock. And …" she hesitated. "Be careful."

"Careful?" he asked, frowning. "As you say, it's just playing music."

"Well," she pursed her lips. "Some music scenes can be a little … wild."

""I'm a Fleet cadet," Spock said. "And a Vulcan. I am more than equal to dealing with any musicians."

"So you say," she muttered as she watched him walk out of the office. "I hope so."

_To be continued… _

1 Spock holds an A7 computer rating in TOS, but it's to be assumed he wasn't at that level this early.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summer of Love**

**By**

**Pat Foley**

**Chapter 3**

Three days later, on a rare day pass from campus, Spock took the Magtrain from San Francisco to Greater Los Angeles. Conscious that this was a civilian position, he wore black slacks and a Vulcan tunic. But as it was raining and his outerwear choices were limited, he added his heavy sweatshirt jacket, with Starfleet's logo on the back and its deep hood. He slung his lyre case over his shoulder.

He showed the fiche he'd been given to a bored guard in the lobby of Westlake Studios in Los Angeles. The guard typed the code into a portable device and then nodded him through. "See reception for which studio," he intoned.

Spock reported himself to a girl behind the reception desk, who gave him such a huge smile of welcome, as if she knew him personally, and was delighted to see him, that he was completely flummoxed.

"Studio A," she said, drawing her hand over his as she handed back his fiche. "Down that hall and on the left. You'll **love **it."

Spock stilled his racing heart. Some Earth girls were so…personable. Limited as his experience was with them, he had begun to comprehend how he might have ended up with a Terran mother.

He found the corridor to be decorated in an exceedingly odd fashion. Row after row of golden discs were hung on the walls. He found it curious. Some ancient Vulcan offshoot cultures had a history of storing knowledge on such discs. But he wondered why they would be considered wall decoration here. He resolved to ask if the occasion allowed.

The door for Studio A was massive and heavy, designed for soundproofing. He stepped directly into a control room with banks and banks of consoles, panels, meters, dials and controls. His eyes widened at the number and variety. It hadn't occurred to him that humans' hearing was actually acute enough to even require such elaborate precision in aural recording.

Facing the console room was a clear walled recording room filled with sensors and musical instruments. There was a drum set as well as a grand piano not dissimilar to his mother's, its lid propped open, presently being played by a hefty black man. Wall screens above the performer were crowded with Terran musical notation. Spock experienced a sense of relief that he'd been taught that script by his mother along with the Vulcan music notation he'd learned at his tutors' hands. He hadn't quite thought this process through that far. Now he realized that probably the score for his Vulcan instrument would be written in Terran musical notation. He would have to convert it to Vulcan notes.

A scruffy bearded man in a ripped t-shirt, lounging on a couch scowled at him, looking up from studying a score, fingers tapping the rhythm, drumsticks at his side. "Who the hell are you?" he demanded.

"Cool it, Richard," the other man said, coming in from the other room. "That's our lyrist, I bet."

"Our what?"

"Didn't you hear? Van El wanted some Vulcan strings on this track. And baby, this cat looks to me to be a Vulcan. If a junior version of one."

Richard gave them a sardonic grin. "You're riding me, man. Who is this **really**?"

Spock froze, wondering if he was the victim of some cruel practical joke. It wouldn't be his first experience of them. But he hoped not. Just the fare alone to this location and back to the Academy would consume a significant portion of his disposable income for the remainder of the month. He couldn't afford a joke of this magnitude.

"Hey, baby, take it easy," Chad said, catching his fractional expression. "My name's Chad. What's yours?"

"S..Spock," he half stuttered, still in near alarm.

"You look like you need some time to grow into a name like that, Junior. Anyway, don't pay any attention to Richard. He complains about everything. Richard, give the kid a break. He's obviously green. In more ways than one," he added, with a glance to Spock's flushed complexion.

"Up yours," Richard said uncharitably.

"Take your coat off, baby" Chad said. "Roy will be back soon. He's the engineer taping the track. He'll show you what you're to lay down—"

"Lay down?" Spock asked suspiciously, shrugging his lyre case off his shoulder and beginning to undo his coat.

"Play, man, play." Richard said. "You **can **actually play?"

"Affirmative," Spock said.

"Coat closet's over there. Then grab yourself a coffee, or a juice, Junior, and I'll show you the sheets," Chad said.

Spock slid his arms out of the sleeves of his jacket.

As he turned, Richard caught sight of the lettering across the back and cocked a brow. "Starfleet? Ahoy, Admiral."

"Cadet, actually," Spock said.

"Shut up, Richard," Chad said and to Spock, "Closet's in the alcove just behind the spread. Don't spill anything on those boards," he added, then looked sheepish as Spock turned, raising a brow.

"Sorry. Just that you look like a kid, Junior."

Spock paused on his way to hanging up his coat. In spite of his best control, he was transfixed by his senses of sight and smell. Because laid out across a table was food that by the looks of it, and the enticing scent, was neither reconstituted nor rescued from long stasis. An artful arrangement of fruit and vegetables, some cut in fancy shapes, some natural. An army of juice and water choices. Fresh vegetables, the makings for salads and sandwiches. The bread was real, artisan made, not computer generated and printed. There was animal flesh among the sandwich items, but Spock had become inured to that. He could overlook it by now with practiced ease, so long as he was not expected to consume it. There were also sweets and pastries, but Spock had no appreciation for refined sugars. Those held no more attraction than the animal flesh. His attention was first held by the orange juice. He could tell by the scent that it was fresh squeezed, not reconstituted. It was something he hadn't tasted, oddly enough, since he'd left Vulcan. The StarFleet commissary version tasted to him not of fruit, but of sugar syrup and additives. But not this here. And there were grapes too, still on their stems. All this fruit seemed far removed from the over-stasis kept apples and oranges in the Fleet commissary. The grapes on the table brought to mind those hanging in his mother's arbor on Vulcan, ironic for a Terran fruit. Thinking of that, he nearly missed Chad's words. Fortunately, Vulcan recall operated independently of his conscious attention.

"Nice spread, right?" Chad asked, noting his fixation. He took a bottle of water.

"It appears very … fresh," Spock said, his mouth watering in unconscious response. His breakfast this morning had been reconstituted oatmeal with purported dried blueberries that hadn't been blueberries, but some other alleged fruit artificially colored and flavored. He'd swallowed it. At least it had calories if not nutrition. But it wasn't what he considered real food.

"Hey, take a look around you," Richard gestured at their surroundings, as if in answer. The huge, almost palatial, elaborate facilities. "You're in a first class recording studio, here."

Spock frowned, clueless as to connect how that fact correlated.

"The clients pay top dollar for this service. The **whole** service," Chad explained. "Half of them have personal chefs dishing out their chow, personal trainers tooling their bods, public relations suits massaging their image. Top producers, top session musicians. You think some B list hack is going to scour the planet for a Vulcan lyrist? You're in Studio A because the artist has more money than sense. No offense."

"None taken," Spock said.

"So, baby, we offer nothing but premium goods here. Chow included."

"That means you, too," Richard said. "So **you'd** better be good."

"I'm good," Spock said, rising to this challenge, fixing him with an imperious Vulcan stare.

"Yeah?"

"Richard, leave the kid alone," Chad said.

"Hey, we're not playing_ Chopsticks_ here."

"Not your problem," Chad said to Richard and to Spock, he said, "I'm sure you'll be fine. Why don't you get something to eat while you wait? Roy will be back in a few minutes."

At eighteen, still a growing youth, Spock couldn't help being somewhat ruled by his stomach, but he took his mind resolutely off the mesmerizing display, chose a glass of the fresh squeezed juice and turning his back on the rest, pensively surveyed his surroundings while he sipped.

Meanwhile, Chad sat down next to Richard, shaking his head, speaking softly, not realizing he was still well within the range of Vulcan hearing. "Aw, man! Give the kid an effing break. He's probably the only Vulcan they could find."

"Amateur hour. Bozo clients," Richard said in a similar undertone.

"They pay your dope bill," Chad countered.

Richard scowled in response.

The engineer returned, introduced himself, and asked Spock some questions. Spock was handed the score he was meant to play as well as some employment forms. The score was in Terran notation as he had expected. He would need to translate Vulcan fingering into Terran scales. But he rapidly made the adjustments in his head, while simultaneously filling out what seemed like an unconscionable amount of paperwork merely to play a few pages of music. Somewhere in the shuffle of forms, he also found himself joining a union. Finally he was finished and went back again through the score, again mentally translating the Terran notation into Vulcan fingering and consigning the adjustments to memory. The score in that respect was useless. He looked up as he finished and said to Roy, who was checking the signed contracts. "Very well. I am prepared."

"Huh?" Roy looked up, still deep in co-signing and checking paperwork.

The performers sitting around in the studio seemed equally taken aback. "Just like that?" Richard asked. "You don't want to even hear a playback first?"

"Argue interpretation?" Chad said, more to Richard than Spock. "That's **your** style."

"I don't understand," Spock said patiently. "I am ready. But if the group is not-"

"This isn't a group performance, rookie," Richard said.

"Richard," Chad adjured. He turned to Spock. "Sometimes we do record as a group. But not usually and not this time. You'll do your part on a separate track, listening to the playback of what's been recorded so far. Then Roy mixes the chosen tracks together."

"Amateurs," Richard muttered.

"If it is required to listen to the playback first, I am not averse," Spock said, determined to be equable. "Though I don't see how that affects the execution of the notation."

"Oh, hell!" Richard said.

"Richard…" Chad began.

"Hey, he says he doesn't need it," Richard drawled.

"I don't," Spock affirmed and then added as if in response to their skeptical looks. "It is quite a simple composition."

"I don't mind gaining some time, rather than losing it. Which is what usually happens, even with seasoned studio musicians," Roy added, looking significantly at Richard. Then he nodded to the door leading to the sound booth. "Just go through there, Spock, put on the headphones to hear the present mix, and play your part along with it. Your score will display above. I'll be happy to get this track laid ahead of schedule. And without the usual static," he gave a glance again to Richard, who favored him with a sardonic salute.

The group watched as Spock, ignoring all this byplay with cool self-possession, picked up his lyre case and walked into the booth.

"What do you figure the Commodore there needs two dozen takes?" Richard asked the others, leaning back and crossing his arms as the soundproof door closed behind Spock. "Who's betting?"

No one answered, bemused by the young Vulcan's calm air.

Unpacking his instrument, Spock tuned it, running fingers over the strings.

"Nice sound," Roy said encouragingly through the studio mike, adjusting the controls on his board as he took preliminary levels. "Very nice. Let's get your audio levels set. Then whenever you're ready, Spock."

In the booth, Spock settled the unfamiliar headphones somewhat gingerly over his elegant ears and working with Roy, carefully set the audio playback levels in them to Vulcan requirements and the recording levels to Roy's satisfaction. Then he nodded through the glass windows that he was ready to begin and pressed the playback indicator. The screens above his head began to display the score, switching to new bars at the recommended tempo. But seemingly oblivious of that aid, Spock never looked at them. Head tilted downward over his lyre, eyes half closed, looking at the strings he caressed with his fingers, Spock listened and played through the music without seemingly needing to consult or follow the score displayed above him. As if he and it inhabited a place alone.

"What the hell?" Richard said, impressed in spite of himself. "No rehearsal, no playback. And now no score?"

"No temperament," Roy said, giving Richard a pointed glance. "No delay. No attitude. No argument. I prefer that in a session musician."

"No mistakes either," Chad said, eyeing the electronic nanny above Roy's head, ready to warn the engineer of discrepancies between the score and the recording input. The computer readout would display red as opposed to a green for a wrong note, or a red slashed bar opposed to a black for a mistake in tempo. The nanny board, however, was solid green and black.

"When I make what **you** call a mistake, it's to make the thing better," Richard said. "I'm an artist rather than a studio hack, one who's no better than a computerized synthesizer. I'm the best and you know it."

"I know **you** know it," Roy said, not sparing his eyes from the controls. "I can't figure this kid out, though. Playing rote perfect, first run through, is rare but not unheard of. But not even looking at the score? And this is his first time in a studio?"

"He's riding us. Some joke," Richard said.

"He had to join the union," Roy reminded them. "A rookie."

"Well, he must have one of those photographic memories," the drummer suggested. "I knew a bloke like that once." He thought. "Couldn't play worth a damn though. Too nervous. No feeling."

"I don't think this one even cares that we're here," Chad said, watching the oblivious Vulcan commune with the playback and his instrument.

"And that's a track," Roy announced, shaking his head in disbelief as the viewscreens stopped scrolling the score, recording a one hundred percent accuracy level. Spock had laid his fingers across his lyre strings to silence them. He opened his eyes and raised a questioning brow to the watching humans.

Roy gestured an okay sign with a thumb and finger, causing Spock only to wrinkle that brow, peering inquisitively at the gesture. The engineer opened the intercom into the sound booth. "That's a take, Spock. Do you want to run through it again?"

Spock frowned. "To what purpose?"

Roy snorted. "Well, come on out, and listen to the playback mix. Then tell me."

Spock picked up his lyre and rejoined the group. Roy gestured him to a seat. Spock settled, eyeing the others while the recording, with Spock's track mixed in, was played.

"Happy with it?" Roy asked when it finished.

Spock's arched brows furrowed slightly again in faint puzzlement. "It is a correct rendering of the notation. I fail to see how emotions should be involved."

"Hmmm," Roy said, frowning. "I almost never rely on just one take. Maybe we should lay down one more, as insurance."

"By our agreement, I am at your disposal for the remainder of the afternoon. If you deem it necessary," Spock said, "I am amendable. Though I don't see why another take is required, since the rendition was accurate and a digital copy is easily made."

"You're right," Roy said, shrugging in capitulation. "I guess that's done. But Spock, hang around, if you will. The client is coming in at three to hear the playback, and you know clients. She may change her mind."

"I actually am not acquainted with the client," Spock said.

"Right," Roy said, rolling his eyes. "Well, clients are notorious for wanting changes after hearing the playback. So hang around anyway since we're paying you for the time. Listen to the others lay down their tracks. Have something to eat."

"Thank you," Spock said, pleased at this latter license to do exactly as he had wished. "I believe I shall."

"Tell me, Spock," Roy said, reviewing the note perfect track pensively, marking comments as to its final mixing as Spock browsed the refreshments. "Do you play other instruments? Other **Terran** instruments?" he qualified.

"I am proficient at keyboards," Spock said, after swallowing a mouthful.

"Good as you are at that?" Roy asked, pointing with a stylus at the lyre.

"I believe so."

"Huh," Roy said, considering, eying the young Vulcan speculatively.

"Hey, hey, Chad. Feel him breathing on your neck," Richard said.

"Never hurts to have a dual keyboarder," Chad said. 'I'll play with the Vulcan cat."

Spock turned and eyed him curiously. "Not a cat, precisely. Though a Vulcan feline, the lemayta, is the herald of my clan."

"Oh, man," Richard said, rolling his eyes.

"Shut up, Richard. I **like** Junior here," Chad said. "And at least he doesn't whine all the time."

"Hey," Richard said.

"What about other similar strings like your lyre, Spock? Guitar, either bass, acoustic, electronic?" Roy asked. "Can't be too different from that." Roy glanced at the instrument at Spock's side. "Honestly looks like an autoharp to me, and that's pretty similar."

"In mechanics, if not entirely in scale or range, certainly such instruments are similar," Spock agreed.

"Take one down," Roy said, waving at a group of cases on the wall. He went back to looking over his schedule and making notations. "Try it out. I can use a keyboardist when Chad isn't available or I need two when I want them playing off each other in a way that can't be easily over-dubbed. But I can use a guitarist more. I imagine I'll get other requests for your lyre." He made a face. "Once one celebrity uses it, they all fall over themselves to copy-cat. So I might be contacting you again for that. But those fads are usually short-lived. Still, if you're going to hang around the studio, you might as well pick up the guitar."

"I will do more than pick it up," Spock said. "I will be pleased to play it."

Roy blinked at that, but tossed it off to the language difference. "All right, then." He swiveled to face the rest of the group. "Richard. Your turn to do your take. Let's hope you manage it in one go like our 'rookie Commodore' here."

"Up yours," Richard said, casually and without rancor. Picking up his drumsticks, he gave Spock an ironic salute with them before heading off into the booth.

Chad laughed. "Don't mind Richard, Junior. He jives everyone."

"But a great drummer," Roy said absently, already concentrating on his board.

Spock ignored the talk, standard nonsense chatter such as humans seemed prone to, and, given open license to do so by the engineer, concentrated on the refreshment table. He was intent on another glass of juice, perhaps even two, and a tempting bunch of grapes. Today, he thought he might edge that elusive nutritional meter, which had been falling toward empty on fresh food, up more than a notch or two. Vulcan control or not, his mouth was watering and his stomach growled. Fortunately the regular beat of drums drowned it out.

All this and money too?

Plus a chance to learn a new instrument.

And Starfleet in accordance.

He finished the glass of juice and a handful of grapes, and after washing his hands – how humans wasted water on such tasks when sonics would do - looked to a guitar. There were several to choose from. He started with an acoustic, picked one that fit his hands, and had a satisfactory action. It was a fine instrument. Well used but with a mellow tone, and a beautiful grain in the wood. Before the client arrived, he was well on his way to learning the note placement. Once he understood the acoustic properties of the strings on the frets, the rest of the note scale was mere calculation. Child's play to a Vulcan's deduction. From there he sketched out the human note scale on the device. Within an hour he was playing, somewhat below tempo, the second guitar part of the current composition. Roy, ears covered by a headset, listening to Richard, paid no attention. But by the time Richard was finished, Spock was managing to play the piece more or less at tempo, though he wasn't satisfied with his string phrasing. That would take more time.

"Not one take," Chad teased, as Richard came through.

"Hey," Richard said, satisfied with his own performance. "It's all about quality. Not speed."

They listened to the playback and the preliminary mix. Then Roy saved the take and checked his watch. "Still ahead of schedule," he said and turned to Spock. "You say you're familiar with keyboards?" He nodded to the grand piano. "We've got time before the client gets here. Play me something."

Spock went into the recording room to the piano, raised its topboard higher, lifted the fallboard protecting the keys, and sat down. He stretched his fingers, then played the range of the keyboard from low to high notes, almost too fast for a human to see his fingers move. Then he looked at Roy. "Do you have tuning tools?"

"Tools?"

"Two of the notes are flat. One is sharp," Spock explained.

Roy blinked. "Show him where they're kept, Chad."

In short order, Spock had the piano tuned.

Chad came out, muttering. "Somebody here's had some classical training."

"But can Rachmaninoff here jam?" Richard asked.

Spock looked at the keyboard as if it contained a particular problem, then launched into the finale of Prokofieff's Piano Concerto #3.

"Wooh," Chad said. Even Richard sat stunned.

Roy shifted, unable to think of an appropriate response. He swallowed and said, "Okay. I'm sure you worked a while to master that. But now let's see how well you sight-read. Can you play the score scrolling above you?" He set one rolling across the boards.

Eyes on the screens above, Spock played. The group in the control room, watching, saw the green and black notes and bars flow by, unmarred by a hint of red.

Roy glanced at his session musicians, and muttered "This is surreal." He waved Spock in, tugging at his collar. But as the Vulcan came through the door, the engineer managed to recover something of his aplomb. "Okay. You clearly have no problem whatsoever with boards. I'm satisfied there. What'd you think about the guitar? Similar enough?"

Spock settled on the couch, picked up the guitar he'd chosen and played the acoustic second part, more or less at tempo, without glancing at the score he'd been studying.

"Not bad," Roy said, listening to him, not missing that Spock was playing sans score. "I mean, on guitar you could use some work on phrasing. But still, not bad." He let out a considering breath. "Well, I can definitely use you on boards. And on acoustic, I expect you won't need long to get up to speed." He glanced at the guitar Spock had chosen, checked the inventory in his computer and nodded. "You can take the guitar with you to get familiar with it. It's not scheduled for any upcoming sessions."

Spock shook his head, human style, and held it away from him, in tacit refusal. "It is clearly a valuable instrument."

"Not that valuable. You saved me that and more in session time." Seeing Spock still looked reluctant, he added, "It's scheduled for replacement in two months anyway. I think we'll get better use out of it in your hands. And I think you'll be able to record on it before then." He forestalled Spock's response. "If your lyre catches on as the fad I expect it will be, you'll get quite a bit of work in the next six months to a year. Maybe two. But don't count on the lyre lasting," he warned. "That kind of fad instrumental comes and goes. But keyboard and guitar work I can offer more or less routinely. If you're interested."

"I am interested," Spock said, earnestly. "And I don't believe Starfleet will object. So long," he temporized, frowning slightly, "as I am booked for the lyre on at least **part **of the session."

"Oh, it's like that, is it?" Roy said, amused.

"I've been given a cultural dispensation," Spock explained. "Next year, I will have more freedom. But for the rest of this year-" he frowned slightly.

"I hear you. Lyre it is. Like I said, I expect you're going to get a lot of work the next few months in that anyway."

"But I am puzzled," Spock said. "Surely there are others with more experience on these Terran instruments than myself?"

"Oh, Junior," Chad said, and laughed till tears came out of his eyes. "Please don't go in the woods alone, baby. Not without your Uncle Chad. You are a pure innocent."

"Let's give the kid a break," Roy said and rising, moved over to the refreshments, taking a bottle of water. The group moved as one with him.

"Of course, there are those with more experience in some respects," Roy said, his eyes on the young Vulcan. "But… no temperament, no acting up?" he asked. "Laying down a note perfect track first time? Not many do that. Studio time's expensive. You saved me some today. I expected to have to spend half a day on getting that track out of you. Maybe more. Not half an hour. In a session musician, that's a major plus."

Spock flicked a brow in consideration of that, as he reached for a tempting mango.

"Even if you're taking some of it back in food," Roy said, amused.

Spock froze, the mango in his hand. Roy laughed.

"Hell, it's a welcome change from the usual drinking and drugging I deal with. Usually no one much touches the food. At least it isn't going to waste. Eat it all, for all I care. I haven't forgotten the appetite I had at your age."

"Yeah, getting porky, Roy-O," Richard teased. "Catching up with Chad here."

"Hey," Chad said. "At least I don't dope."

"You mean you don't buy. You still bum mine."

"Vulcans don't indulge in euphorics. Of any kind," Spock said, half offended at this talk. "Even sugar is –"

Roy shook his head. "How old are you, Spock?"

"Eighteen point six standard years," Spock admitted.

"A babe in arms," Chad said.

Roy nodded. "Awfully young to be so old."

"My life span is-"

"Mature, I meant."

Spock raised a brow, "I think my father would disagree, sir."

"Then heaven help this crew if they ever meet your father."

"Yes, sir," Spock said in fervent agreement.

"And don't let this crew corrupt you," he added.

"I've got some fine weed-" Richard said suggestively, an evil grin on his face.

"Richard," Roy warned, then noticed Spock turning his head to a commotion in the hall that the rest of them soon heard as well. "And the client's here," he said. "First time for you, Spock, so here's the deal. Don't speak unless spoken to. Don't offer your opinion unless asked, and preferably not even then. And don't agree to anything the client says. Let me do the talking."

"Aye, sir," Spock said, a Starfleet reflex, recognizing an order when he heard one.

Roy rolled his eyes. "Kid, you are spoiling me."

Spock let the semi-pejorative animal characterization go, having heard it from Mark Abrams on Vulcan. But as for anything else spoiling, he was entirely adverse, particularly given his own requirements. To that end, he surreptitiously slipped an extra mango into his jacket pocket before following the group. Determined to keep any excess fruit from that dire fate.

"Well, Junior," Chad said to him, "looks like you're now a session musician."

Trailing behind the others, Spock set his mouth against a betraying curve. Money, music **and** food. If he were to use the vernacular of his new part-time profession, this appeared to be a good gig.

_To be continued… review, review, review..._


	4. Chapter 4

**Summer of Love**

**by**

**Pat Foley**

**Chapter 4**

Coming through the door was an entourage, that reminded Spock of the aides and guards that often surrounded and flanked his father. Or the flying squad that accompanied senior officers on inspection tours at StarFleet. He found himself rising to his feet in unconscious respect for what such a group, in his limited experience, must mean.

Limited experience. Because the center of the group was not a statesman bearing Ambassadorial robes, nor a flag officer conducting a review, but a woman wearing what appeared to be tiger striped jeans and an animal fur vest. Spock stilled his face from the automatic disapproval the costume engendered, not to mention the mental associations to the lematya of his home planet, and took a step to the back of the musicians.

"Roy!" the woman embraced the engineer in a manner that made Spock uneasy. She had long blond hair, not a natural blond like his mother's, hanging to her waist in a manner that to Spock seemed improper and to which he hadn't yet become accustomed during his stay on Terra. While there were girls and women in Fleet, they kept their hair secured in a manner more in keeping with Vulcan traditions, though it was due to practical Starfleet regulations. Men in general kept their hair cropped short. Either way, such styles made it less likely an enemy could use it to restrain you, or that it would get caught in some machinery.

"I loved the preliminary tracks you sent," she enthused.

"Nothing preliminary about them," Roy said, smiling perfunctorily, his eyes narrowed at this first, predictable salvo. "They were final tracks."

"Well, yes, but with just a few changes-"

The musicians around Spock gave a sigh so concerted and in unison that Spock looked around, wondering if he had missed some general cue as to social response.

"Shouldn't take more than the day," Jared Defoe, the business manager said, paging through his digital personal assistant. "Provided you don't try and string us out on time."

""We'll certainly do our best," Roy said with tired patience. "Your musicians are all here, so the sooner we get started–"

"Yes," Van El said, "And I've brought them all a little something. Jan?" she looked behind her to a laden attendant, who began handing out mylar bags of swag.

"Drew, Finn. Darling Chad. Dear Richard," she said, ignoring his sardonic grin. And-" the assistant came face to face with the young Vulcan as Richard turned away. With the short Fleet haircut revealing every arched brow and pointed ear, his alien origin was undisguisable. "Oh!" the assistant fluttered in ethnocentric alarm.

"Van-El, this is Spock. Your lyrist," Roy said, as he set his own unwanted bag of swag aside.

"A pleasure to meet you," Van El said, holding out her hand.

Spock put his hands behind his back and straightened, giving her a circumspect nod instead. "Madam."

Van El laughed, in part to cover up the awkward moment. "I hope that's meant in the non-prostitution sense."

"English isn't his first language," Roy said, with a repressive look to Spock, once that Spock had been well familiar with receiving before, albeit from his mother. At this Spock politely took the swag bag the assistant thrust into his hands, keeping his face stoic in spite of her standing as far away from the 'alien' as she possibly could. Then he retreated behind the other musicians.

"Too bad you didn't say _Boo_, Junior," Chad said, in a prison whisper meant for Vulcan ears. "She'd have jumped up to the acoustic tiles."

"He's very …young, isn't he," Van El meanwhile was saying, following the Vulcan with her eyes as Spock peered dubiously into the bag full of items largely bearing the singer's likeness, wondering what possible use she thought he might have for these. Her voice was pitched low, but not low enough for Vulcan hearing.

"He's lent to us from Starfleet Academy."

"Starfleet." Her face hardened a bit and her voice went up again. "Well, I'm not sure **that's** quite the image I want this album to represent. I want interstellar synchrony. A coming together in music. I'm not entirely in favor of military-"

"You played the Denubian Rings last year, did you not, Madam?" Spock lifting his head from his perusal of the nonsense items with which he'd been gifted.

"Yes. Part of a Live Aid tour."

Spock set the bag aside, and approached, hands behind his back, but eyes blazing. "Surely you're aware that if Starfleet hadn't intervened in their time of crisis, there would have been no population to which you could subsequently render 'Live Aid' with your concertizing."

She stared at him, too flummoxed to reply. Roy hastily intervened.

"Let's get started, shall we?" Roy motioned Van El to the recording booth. "Get your amended vocals out of the way first." When the door closed behind her, he shook his head at the Vulcan. "Remember what I said before, Spock. Don't argue with the client."

"Hell, good one, kid," Richard said, ignoring the engineer's displeasure and thumping Spock on the arm.

Spock whirled reflexively, fists up in defense mode, a reaction trained in daily hand-to-hand classes. Richard's eyes widened and he held his own hands up in surrender. "Hey Commodore! Shields down!"

"My apologies," Spock said, stiffening, eyes narrowed, dropping his to his side. "But it is best not to strike me. Unless you intend an altercation—"

"Guess our Junior can handle himself," Chad said.

"I regret if my reflexes momentarily preceded my reason. In Fleet, daily training in hand-to-hand is mandatory," Spock said.

"Don't fret, Junior. In Richard's case, that condition's more than momentary."

"Up yours," the drummer said, unphased. But he slid his eyes respectfully from the young Vulcan.

"Who is **she**?" Spock asked, viewing the singer with an unVulcan glower, his temper still fluctuating somewhat past his control, "to so disparage StarFleet?"

"Baby, what she **is, **is your meal ticket," Chad said. "Remember what Roy told you. Don't speak unless spoken to. These cats we play for, they fly around to cheering crowds, surrounded by 'yes, men'. They start to think of themselves as a cross between Albert Schweitzer, Mother Theresa, and a roving Federation Ambassador. God's gift to the universe. Crazy, yes, but it's not our place to pop their bubble. So, like Roy said, you just play nice."

"I shall play accurately," Spock huffed. But reminded that the artist was his meal ticket, he went over to the refreshment table to grab what perhaps might be his last under this employment while he looked over the latest score.

"I don't know about that Vulcan, Roy," Van El said, as she settled her headphones over her ears, looking at Spock through the soundproof panels.

"He's **very** gifted," Roy said.

"He's very **young**," she said. "Are you sure he's legal?"

"Eighteen."

"**Barely** legal," she said.

"Vanny, you wanted alien accompaniments as a hook," DeFoe said. "What does it matter to you how old, so long as you get them?"

Watching the arm gestures that accompanied an argument, Richard surreptitiously opened the audio between the recording and control room.

"I like my sessioners to **like** me," she said.

"Flatter you, you mean," DeFoe said, unimpressed.

"F- her, he means, " Richard mouthed to his group, back turned, listening.

"What do you care? Session musicians are low charisma technicians," DeFoe countered. "If they were any good, they'd make it on their own."

In the control room, now listening to the relayed audio, the musicians traded glances, their faces setting at this slight.

Mouth full, Spock met their eyes. A look of solidarity passed between them.

"F—her," Richard mouthed, eyes hard, this time with an entirely different meaning.

"It's just another gig, baby," Chad said softly. "They come and go. Let it go."

"They aren't all like this, Spock" Drew said comfortably, unbothered after the first bad moment. He leaned against the back of the couch, guitar in his arms, and air played a comforting lick.

"Yeah," Richard said sardonically. "Some are worse."

"Well, maybe a few," Drew said, and laughed. "Most could care less. Half the time, we never even meet the talent."

"Are we not talent as well?" Spock asked, half offended for his associates.

"There's talent, and there's celebrity," Drew said.

"Plenty with the latter, don't have much technical competence." Finn, the bass player, was generally silent. So when he spoke, the group tended to listen. "Fame is mostly marketing. And luck."

"Don't let it rile you, Junior," Chad said, seeing Spock had thrust out his lower lip in an understatedly Vulcan but still recognizable version of a pout1. "You're in the brotherhood here."

"Humph." Spock said, listening to the vocalist. He tilted his head in a Vulcan shrug, singularly unimpressed. "My mother sings better. This female is not even in tune."

"S'why we have auto-tune," Richard said comfortably.

"Yo mamma, yet," Chad said, amused. "'Zat where you get your talent, baby?"

Drawn back to himself, Spock thought pensively of his father, gifted on the lyre even though he rarely played. Even if he did take after Sarek in that respect, given their present state of disaffection, Spock could hardly claim the relationship. "I suppose so." At least he thought his mother might be pleased at his granting her that credit.

The musicians traded glances, puzzled by his subdued air.

One by one, the individual musicians were called into booths to lay down the new tracks. They got through most of the rerecordings by late afternoon, and were gathered to listen to a final vocal redub when instead of balancing the mixes, the board suddenly delivered an unmelodious caterwaul to the speakers, and then the boards' indicators and lights faded.

"What the?" Van El said, hands on her ears.

Roy meanwhile was flipping switches and rebooting his equipment, to no avail. "Looks like the main circuit board."

Those recording came trailing out of the main and secondary isolation rooms. Defoe checked his chronometer with a finicky attention to the accounting potential. "I hope this isn't going to take long. Van El has a schedule, you know. She has to be in London-"

"Switch to another studio?" Chad asked.

"All booked," Roy said, and swore when nothing he did helped.

"Move someone," Defoe ordered.

"Look, don't worry," Roy placated. "We have backup parts, plus A3 rated computer technicians on call. The best in the business. They can be here within an hour."

"An hour?" Defoe said. "She's got interviews set up for evening. Then a shuttle to catch."

"If you would allow me?" Spock had come up to observe Roy's futile efforts on the controls. "I am familiar with electronics and computers."

"Look, kid, this is way beyond whatever tinkertoy you've played with-" Defoe said.

"I hold an A6 computer rating," Spock said.

"An A6?" Roy said, astounded. "A6? That's –"

"You can check my accreditation," Spock said. "Replacing a board on such a device as this is a minor endeavor," he said to Defoe.

"Damn, Junior. What can't you do?" Chad asked.

"Many things," Spock assured the pianist. "But this task is well under my skill set."

"I don't know," Roy began, still uneasy, looking from his expensive equipment, worth many thousands of credits, to his impatient clients.

"Let him do it," Defoe took the engineer aside. "Or I'll charge **you** for the lost time, rather than the reverse."

Roy's jaw set at this. "Technical failures are covered under contract."

"Look, the board can't be any deader than it is," Van El said. "What's the harm?"

There was the sound of metal separating, and the group turned to see Spock removing the cover from the console's inner mechanisms with a prying tool. He surveyed the guts of the device with a judicial air. "This will take perhaps twenty minutes," he said, glancing over at the group still huddled in contention. "Perhaps you might avail yourselves of the refreshments while I replace the board."

"Hell, I think I might come to like that kid," Defoe said as he sipped water and watched the Vulcan repair the board with Vulcan speed.

"If only it weren't such cradle robbing," Van El said, giving Spock a regretful glance. "I might like him too."

Three hours later, the tracks were all in the can, Defoe had finished the publicity photos he'd arranged to follow a successful session, including an unsmiling Spock, and Roy was ushering Van El and her entourage out with plenty of time to spare. The earlier brunch refreshments had been replaced with more substantial dinner menus. Spock, along with the musicians, was contentedly consuming spinach manicotti complete with fresh diced tomatoes and mushrooms.

"Don't they feed you in Starfleet, Commodore?" Richard asked, amused by Spock's serious attention to the food.

"Cadet," Spock absently corrected, as he licked away a stray bit of sauce. "Yes, but unfortunately not **well**. Everything in the Fleet commissary is reconstituted. I **will** adjust to it eventually," he said, staring down at his plate with a fervent determination that betrayed his emotions. "But for now," he shrugged and went back to his meal.

"You've been holding out on us, Junior," Chad said. "Where'd you pick up a computer rating like that?"

"At the Vulcan Science Academy," Spock quirked a brow at that obvious, to him, fact.

"Why aren't you computering, then?" Richard asked.

"Cadets, plebes, aren't permitted to take positions outside of Fleet in their first year," Spock said. "This gig, as you call it, was an exception. In part to benefit Fleet public relations."

"Well, that's over with," Roy exclaimed in relief as he returned. "They're in their aircar and gone." He sank into a chair.

"It went well," Chad said, filling a plate and passing it to the engineer. "She had hardly a diva moment."

"Except for Defoe's" Richard smirked.

"I think Spock here put her off her usual stride."

"Puzzled her, more like. If she **could** be shamed." Richard added.

"Maybe," Roy said. He eyed Spock over their plates of manicotti. "Thought I told you not to argue with clients. Ever."

Mouth full, Spock shrugged human style.

"An A6 computer rating? How did a -?" Roy began.

"Vulcan Science Academy," Chad said helpfully.

Spock gave them his best Vulcan innocent look in favor of answering. The session had run late, what with the holo session he estimated he only had minimal time before leaving to catch the magtrain back to San Francisco. Limited time to get in a dinner. Or two.

"Tell me, kid, are there many more like you walking around?" Roy asked, accepting the plate.

Spock swallowed and considered his divided heritage seriously. "Not many, sir."

"Guess it's a good thing we've got you under contract then," Roy allowed, and dug into his pasta.

"More, please?" Spock said and passed his empty plate back to Chad, determined to stock up against the long, reconstituted week ahead.

He put away his second helping and made his train. But it wasn't long after that when Spock found himself called to report on that day's activities.

"Do you mind explaining this?" Commander Kaine, the Freshman Dean, tossed a flimsy on his desk.

Spock peered at the headline, _"Will strings lead to heartstrings?"_ complete with one of the holographs Defoe's reporters had taken of himself with the singer. _"Van El lyricizes with Vulcan Alliance. Songbird to the Stars!"_

"Perhaps some literary license," Spock conceded, "though not out of the range of what I estimate is usual for the less legitimate press," he added. "They **were** lyre strings."

"You were given permission to pursue this as a cultural liaison. Not as a –" Kaine sputtered, "a rent boy."

"I was paid for my efforts," Spock said. "Standard union scale."

"Union?!"

"Only for the music," Spock clarified. "**Not** for the computer work I performed."

Kaine studied the clueless Vulcan before him. The flush slowly faded from the human's face and he sank behind his desk. "You don't know what I'm talking about, do you?"

Spock tilted his head. He said nothing.

"Or you **do**." Kaine glowered. "And you aren't saying."

Spock eyes had widened as he belatedly took in Kaine's meaning, but he was too shocked to follow up on such, to him, prurient aspersions. "I had permission to pursue this employment," he said coldly. "I fail to see the issue to which you object."

"You have an image to uphold as a member of StarFleet!"

"I was contracted to perform a Vulcan skill," Spock countered, stolid with Vulcan control, unphased by this contentious debate with a senior officer.

"Humph!" Keene said, not missing the lack of even a trace of guilty conscience. "So long as that "Vulcan skill" doesn't result in more Vulcans in the guise of a paternity suit," he said. "Starfleet can't afford scandals."

Spock raised a brow, even as his cheekbones flushed chartreuse. "If I understand you correctly, that sort of scandal is not something I am interested in pursuing."

"You won't have the opportunity," Kaine said. "Your employment privileges are now rescinded. We can't risk even the hint of scandal."

Spock straightened slightly, one brow rising. "But-"

"That's an order, Cadet."

There was nothing Spock could really say in reply, except the obligatory, "Aye, sir." He gave it, wondered how such a minor thing as a holograph could have such consequences.

"Dismissed."

Deeply puzzled, for he was sure logic was on his side, Spock checked out the netsphere, seeking information as to what social mores he'd violated. The double entendre in the article, expertly drawn in such tabloids, was somewhat over his relatively innocent head. He failed to appreciate it in all its implications. The dean's objections thus remained a mystery to him.

And because fortunately or not, tabloids of that nature and in that genre were uncommon literary fodder at Starfleet Academy, no one else enlightened him. The student body hadn't picked up on the articles, or if they had, were unaware that the Vulcan in the press article was in fact their fellow cadet. Spock had no close confidants to have shared with anyone his extra-curricular activity. So he continued to fly under the sensor net.

Meanwhile, Roy contacted him. Van El, he said, wanted some more changes. And another photo session.

"My privileges have been rescinded," Spock explained, brow furrowed in regret.

"What the hell did you do?" Roy asked.

"Nothing that I can understand merits such curtailment," Spock said. "The dean took objection to some stories circulated in the netsphere regarding my employment by Van El."

"Wait a minute," Roy said slowly. "Are you telling me Starfleet – the organization supposedly defending our interests in space - is freaking over normal tabloid drivel?"

"If I understand you, affirmative."

Roy swore. "Well, I'm in the middle of an album here. I have a paying client who booked you. And for which, I might add, **you** signed a **contract**."

Spock lowered his brows further. "But I have performed the necessary service."

"The artist has the right to request reasonable retakes." Roy ran a hand through his hair. "Look, I'm not going to sue you for breach if you don't come back. DeFoe might. But if Van El wants, she's got her paparazzi on speed dial." Roy grimaced, realizing the Vulcan might be clueless as to the term. "They're-"

"I'm somewhat aware of the negative aspects of that segment of the press," Spock said slowly, thinking of times when they'd been after his mother.

"Even if she might not want to slam you, they'd probably leap to give your Fleet a black eye if they got word they were the mute on the bowstring." Seeing Spock looked mystified, he added. "They'd make Fleet look ridiculous. Hell, this is ridiculous even to me." He took pity on the clueless Vulcan youth. "Look, do you want me to talk to your dean? Maybe explain the politics of show business? It's not simple military maneuvers."

"Negative," Spock frowned, imagining that conversation, but straightened, preparing himself for it mentally. "I apparently put my superiors in this vulnerable position. It is my task to retrieve the situation."

"Good luck," Roy said.

Spock let out a little sigh as he cut the connection, wondering why humans always appealed to chance when logic and preparation were more obvious a solution.

There **was** one good advantage to being a diplomatic brat, even though Spock didn't think of himself in that way, and did his best to avoid being singled out for special treatment. When he asked for an audience with higher ups, he was invariably given an appointment. That didn't mean they liked the necessity, or would accede to him, but at least he got a hearing.

And whether he was conscious of that, the dean was aware of the difference between the Vulcan plebe and the average cadet. He actually stood when Spock entered the room, an inadvertent gesture, though just long enough to give Spock a gruff acknowledgment and gesture him hastily to a chair to cover this _faux pas_ in rank.

"I have discovered a conflict between your prior orders and an inadvertent obligation on my part. Sir." Spock began.

"What obligation can that be?" the dean asked, paging in his mind potential demands from this cadet's myriad lofty relations and his service in StarFleet.

"I must return to the studio to complete some recordings."

The dean straightened, on more comfortable ground, now that he wasn't dealing with the legendary T'Pau or Sarek of Vulcan. "I thought that rigamarole was over. I **ordered** it to be over."

"When I first engaged in the activity, I had no such orders," Spock explained. "And my obligations were not contracted with your rescinded permission in mind."

"Do you intend to be a musician or a Fleet officer, cadet?"

"I am a musician," Spock clarified. "I intend still to be a Fleet officer. I foresee no issues in accommodating both at this time."

"Except I've forbidden the former."

"Sir," Spock said. "I informed the studio of your orders. And they agreed that they could do nothing to counter them."

"Are you suggesting you will?"

"No, sir," Spock said. "But the engineer pointed out that while he would make other arrangements, albeit not willingly, he could do nothing to curtail the artist. Or the press, should the artist so inform them that Starfleet had required my reneging on my contractual obligations due to some minor tabloid coverage."

The dean studied the Vulcan before him minutely. Spock maintained his innocently helpful expression.

"You're saying they plan to give Fleet a black eye?"

Spock thought it interesting how such a wildly irrelevant phrase occurred to two such differing individuals on separate sides of a conflict. "Planned is perhaps excessive. His immediate impression was that Fleet's vacillation upon some minor tabloid attention would be evaluated as less than notable. In an institution tasked with both guarding the Federation and exploring the unknown," he added helpfully.

"Well, hell, they're saying we're cowards."

"Perhaps. Yes, sir."

"Let me make myself clear, Cadet," the dean said. "In Fleet, we may be forced to deal with political exigencies. But that doesn't mean we appreciate those that impose them. Troublemakers don't last in Fleet."

"No, sir," Spock said. Then added. "I was not seeking trouble," His brows drawing down, he continued, "I was contacted to assist in this endeavor, as I understand it, in part to accommodate the Civilian Liaison Office. I cooperated as requested. **Nothing** I have done should have reflected adversely upon StarFleet."

The older officer slapped his palm on the desk. "All right. So you claim innocence. Maybe this nonsense is our Public Relations department seeking to make our image more relevant, or accessible." He leaned forward across the desk. "If so, I can't counter them. Go off and play music – I suppose even Fleet has to dance sometimes to a civilian tune-"

"Sir," Spock objected, "as to dancing, neither I-"

The dean shook a finger at the young Vulcan. "But while I won't hold you responsible for tabloid nonsense, you'd better not give me an adverse reason to notice you again."

Rather than react in any alarm, Spock sat back, raising a brow at the outthrust finger. He gave his superior a long, emotionless, evaluative look, clearly unimpressed by such a threat. He was thinking back to his confrontation with Sarek, before he left for Starfleet. And how different his reaction had been, then. Even though he had been determined to leave, Sarek's warnings had shaken him. But the dean's warnings left him singularly unimpressed. He was so long in responding, in fact, that the dean became embarrassed.

"You're dismissed, Cadet."

Spock rose precisely. Stood to attention. "Yes sir," he said his very control underlying his impression of the prior interchange. He turned with military precision and went out.

"Any other plebe would have quaked. Appropriately," the dean rose and went to stare out his window, noting the young Vulcan departing the building, his walk as measured and as calm as if the interchange hadn't happened. "Vulcans!"

Spock didn't hesitate to take full advantage of the license he had been granted. And exploited it to the full.

He soon had a regular recording schedule at WestLake Studios, a Magtrain subscription pass from San Francisco to Greater LA, a guitar of his own and a satisfactory credit balance in his Federation banking accounts. He was nothing more than a session musician at WestLake, but he was considered a reliable and versatile one. That he had both instrument and computer repair skills added to his reputation.

And he was finding the experience fascinating.

Twice he'd been flown from San Francisco to London to the Abbey Road Studios. He was given to understand these were legendary facilities. To him a studio was a studio, and his chief interest was the sound boards they contained. Though the Georgian townhouse Abbey Road was located in was an interestingly archaic piece of architecture, preserved from all the London development by a historic trust. In that vein, he signed his name to the list of artists who'd performed there with a quirk of his brow, thinking of a Vulcan adding to that storied history. And when he had a moment away from recording, he went to see the legendary Buckingham Palace. He thought it compared vary unfavorably with the Fortress. Or his grandmother's much larger palace. Still, it was only a human edifice.

He was also sent on gigs to New York City and Detroit. Three times he also recorded Stellarvision specials for various 'stars', several for delayed broadcast and some 'live'. The immense crowds before several of these performances had surprised him and given him pause. Not that he was afflicted with performance nerves. Just with concern that such a large group, all projecting emotion, would overwhelm telepathic shields that he'd never thought would be put to such a test.

But he discovered that rather than the crowd's emotions being a detriment, instead their projection had carried him and the other musicians away, on a burst of near euphoria he'd been hard pressed to completely barrier against.

Still, he'd kept his head well enough to keep it down. And strove to keep his ears usually covered with a headset. Very much striving to be incognito as one of mere myriad studio backup musicians, lest either Starfleet or perhaps even his relatives on Vulcan, take exception to these somewhat unorthodox activities.

But while there had been some additional news coverage of the new fad for alien instrumentals in popular music, the focus had been far more on the stars embracing the phenomenon. No reporter went too far out of his or her way to seek out a studio musician who took pains to avoid notice, particularly when others were very much putting themselves forward. Had they been able to put two and two together and realized the young Vulcan playing backup guitar or lyre was actually the one and same son of Ambassador Sarek and Amanda Grayson, grandson of T'Pau of Vulcan - the only person to turn down a seat on the Federation High Council – that he was the heir to the Vulcan Alliance and a Starfleet cadet against his father's wishes, there could have been far more fanfare. But Sarek and Amanda had gone to considerable pains to keep their son free from media attention as he was growing up. And they had been so successful at that, that he had been largely forgotten by the tabloid media. No one of their number, so far, had put two and two together.

Spock found himself having a moderately enjoyable time, and experiencing an interesting deviation from his Starfleet curriculum. Though with a Vulcan's talent for compartmentalization, he found nothing notable in maintaining such an extreme contrast as a norm. In fact, given he'd been raised by a very human mother, and had lived a very Vulcan existence outside of his home, living such dual lives in tandem seemed quite ordinary to him.

One particular Saturday in late March he'd traveled down by MagTrain to WestLake as usual. In short order, he'd performed a lyre solo for a psychedelic rock group called "No!", then a classical piano accompaniment that Chad had preferred to defer to him. By late afternoon, he was playing second guitar to Drew Cobb and Finn McNeary, lead and bass guitarists, the three of them rehearsing together in what Spock had come to understand was a typical run through prior to their recording on different tracks in separate isolation rooms. Both humans exchanged grins and glances as they picked through the intricate dueling solos. Spock found himself caught up in the camaraderie, and his mouth curved in a faint echo of its own, enjoying the oneness that such collaborations granted, which persisted even through the individual track recordings that followed.

"That's the last track, everyone," Roy finally said. "Spock, before you go, can you take a look and give a listen to that Quinto board? I'm seeing some oscillations."

"Certainly," Spock said, setting aside his guitar.

Significant looks passed between the other musicians. They packed up their instruments before filing into the control room where Spock sat alone, having manhandled the massive board out from the wall and disassembled it into pieces around him on the floor.

"Find out what's wrong with it?" Richard asked, lounging into a seat.

"It appears to be a loose connection," Spock mused, head into his work. "No doubt the vibrations jarred –" he looked up, seeing the musicians settling around him. He blinked, sensing some deeper intent in the group. His fingers tightened around the tool in his hand. He considered, belatedly, if he had made a mistake. In his plebe year in Starfleet, he'd learned quickly never to be caught out alone and vulnerable. But after the first week, he'd dropped his guard, never suspecting that in this group.

Now he wondered if his months here, sans anything similar to that hazing that plagued Starfleet, had allowed him to be carelessly set up. Roy had gone. He looked from one to the other of the group whom he'd thought had been …colleagues, if not precisely friends. "You want something of me?" he asked, hiding his discomfort in stiff formality.

Drew shifted uneasily, and rose. Spock dropped the tool and prepared himself. Five to one was actually not bad odds for him. And few of these musicians appeared to be in shape. If they came one by one, he'd have no problems. And even if they rushed him, as a group-

_Why,_ he wondered, even as he drew in a breath. _Why always?_

"We were wondering, Spock, what your plans are. For the summer," Drew clarified.

Spock stared at the lead guitarist for a long moment, reconnecting his conscious brain back from battle mode. "Summer?" he asked. He reminded himself to breathe again. Even in the heavy oxygen content here, he was feeling a little light-headed from the Vulcan equivalent of adrenalin.

"You won't be in school, right? I mean, even Starfleet takes a couple of months off?" Richard asked.

Spock looked from one to the other of the group again, now really confused. "I don't understand."

"Oh, hell, Drew, just lay the track down," Chad said and leaned forward over his hands. "Normally we don't do much session work in the summer, Junior. Everyone tours, because kids are out of school, and the concert season really picks up. No one wants to be buried in a studio, playing to a board rather than a crowd."

"Normally we hire ourselves out," Finn said. "And we make good money at it."

"But this year," Drew said. "We're thinking of playing our own gigs."

Spock walled his emotions up against the loss he felt. A differing loss than what he'd mistakenly suspected a moment ago, but still a loss. He thought he'd left behind the emotions he had experienced every time his parents departed for each siren call of diplomacy. But now these same emotions rose up as if new. And here he was, left behind again. "I wish you every success," he said formally, his mouth setting. He picked up the tool, lowering his head over the board to hide his too obvious reaction.

"No, Junior, you don't get it," Chad said. "We're asking you if you want to join us."

Spock drew a sharp breath, and his head rose. "Really?"

"We can't promise to pay much," Drew warned. "Split takes from the gigs, after expenses. But we'd also pay you a small salary as a roadie."

"What is a roadie?" Spock asked, narrowing his eyes.

"Hell, this kid is too innocent to bear," Richard objected. "And all summer?"

"Shut up, Richard," Drew said. "Keeping instruments tuned, and equipment repaired, helping to set up. You tune, even without an electronic nanny."

"Well, naturally, I have no need of one," Spock said, obscurely offended at this slur to his perfect pitch.

"And you seem able to repair pretty much anything electronic. You can string. There's a lot of wear and tear involved in moving and setting up instruments every night," Drew explained. "So those skills are a plus. Not to mention there's grunt work," he eyed the massive board Spock had managed unaided. "You'd be handy."

"I could perform those tasks," Spock agreed. "And at present, I haven't yet made plans for when the Starfleet term ends. I had thought-" he closed his mouth on that. His mother had suggested, before he'd left Vulcan, that he return this summer. But then she had seemed so strangely incommunicado for much of the year. His father was still obdurately against his Starfleet enlistment. And his mother, while she had been helpful and responded to weekly messages, had seemed more and more remote of late. He supposed it a natural consequence of his absence. But he didn't think his presence on Vulcan would be welcome at this time. "I have no plans," he reiterated, walling off those emotions too.

"This wouldn't be a five star tour," Finn warned. "The takes could be lower than what you might get sessioning for some big name. You could get a gig like that. We often do, summers." He made a face. "But we deal with those egos the rest of the year."

"Yeah," Richard said, in fervent disparagement. "F- em."

"Every few years, we just like to go off on our own, play our own music at our own gigs," Finn said.

"Where are these gigs?" Spock asked.

"Everywhere we can line up, man," Richard said.

"Small venues," Drew cautioned. "No fifty thousand seat stadiums, like in London or New York. You'd certainly get to see more of the country," he said. "In a small way. We don't do any world touring. But we cover a lot of the states. You'd get to see more of the music scene."

"It would be educational," Finn said.

"From the down and gritty end," Drew continued.

"Particularly gritty," Richard said. "The road on tour, particularly a low-ball tour, is a different place. Maybe **no** place for a choir boy."

"Shut up, Richard," Drew said.

"I'm just saying," Richard argued, "that maybe the road is no place for a kid like the Commodore here, who doesn't drink, doesn't dope and doesn't appear to chase tail."

"You **agreed**, Richard," Drew said.

"So long as he understands we aren't his babysitters," Richard said.

"I don't need a babysitter," Spock said, brows lowering into thunderclouds.

"Junior will be just fine," Chad said firmly.

"Subsequent to my confirming dates and –" Spock thought of the necessity of explaining this to his mother, "other requirements, I accept."

Everyone, even Richard, relaxed.

And Chad grinned his sunshine smile. "We're going to have us a great summer, baby."

_To be continued..._

_review, review, review_

Footnote:

1 Before anyone objects, Leonard Nimoy's Spock does pout in quite a few episodes of TOS. It's kind of amusing/endearing in a Vulcan. (Don't think of Nimoy's Spock from the movies, quite different in many respects) Zach in the Reboot movies did a bit as well.


	5. Chapter 5

**Summer of Love**

**By**

**Pat Foley**

**Chapter 5**

Spock snapped to instant alertness in the middle of the night, blinking his eyes into the humid darkness of his Starfleet dorm room. No rowdy band of hazers had roused him, as had happened so often during this first plebe year, an occurrence requiring that he rout them and send them back to their own rooms. 1 His tormentors had largely given up those attempts against his dorm at least, given the Vulcan in residence was never unprepared.

No, torrential rain woke him. As heavy as if the nearby ocean had risen up, broken apart into droplets and was attempting to submerge the land.

Listening to sheets of water pouring down against roof and walls, he shivered.

Just having that restless ocean nearby was disquieting enough for a Vulcan. And the Pacific was allegedly a gentle ocean.

In his experience, waters should be safely subterranean. Except reasonable extrusions from mountain fed springs.

Vulcan born and bred, he believed he **should** appreciate rain. Somehow.

But in spite of Terran allegations about the hypnotic rhythm of its delivery, he could not find the noise conducive to sleep. Nothing like the soothing swish of a sandstorm.

He shifted and turned over in his bed. It was not a particularly comfortable bunk. The linens were fabricated fiber, not the Vulcan spintassle, Egyptian cotton, or Rigelian beesilk that had spanned his wide bed at home. Of those comfortable luxuries he'd been somewhat unaware while heir to them. And his small dorm cubicle - Starfleet believed in letting students planning a career in space become accustomed to confined spaces early – was also his alone. A tiny but personal refuge that he was privileged to possess. Most freshman students were required to share a cubicle. However workmanlike and utilitarian, however compact and mean, he valued his solitary refuge.

Except that now the storm was battering the roof, walls and windows of his box-like quarters as if striving to drown him in his compartment.

Restless and ill at ease, Spock rose and went to his desk. To distract himself from the cacophony, he replayed the message he'd received from his mother in response to his first tentative sortie about his summer vacation. He would not admit that his purpose was to hear her voice in a stressful, alien moment.

But, as in the others he'd received from her in the last few months, her tone was…decidedly odd.

"_I'm heartened to think of you moving about on Terra, living your own life, having new experiences, making friends," _she'd claimed. But she hadn't responded to particulars. She hadn't replied to his hints about not coming home for the summer. She indicated no decision, or even opinion on that.

He couldn't understand her. When he'd first left for StarFleet, she'd been full of questions about his activities. But that had gradually changed. Now she spoke in generalities, as if uninterested in specifics. Or unable to focus on them.

He firmly repressed any disappointment about that lack of engagement, of interest. He supposed she was busy in research. At any event, he did not presume to press her. Yet.

He was too circumspect to ask her permission outright. Not at first. He had more or less promised, though under some duress, when he had left for StarFleet, to consider returning to Vulcan for a visit upon his first break. It had been a condition, along with these weekly messages, of her allowing him to leave with no attempts at obstacles. Even if she had largely forgotten that, or even him, the tacit commitment niggled at his conscience.

He had no wish to lose a mother, after all. Not in addition to his father. Not by reneging on that tacit, however coerced promise. If she intended to hold him to it. But she'd said nothing in reply to his hints. Nothing tangible.

That was so unlike her. His mother was not one to shy from conflict.

But at least she had not demanded his attendance.

Unless she didn't desire it.

However welcome that possibility was in the respect of giving him his freedom, it was unwelcome in its other meanings.

He reread her message and frowned. There was little he could do if she responded with an ambiguity that was, in truth, as nebulous as his own tentative missive broaching his change of plans. Neither was normal for either of them. He would have to wait another week and try again. Sending again, earlier than their schedule was not an option he considered. Based on the history of the last six months, he did not believe that he'd receive a response if he messaged more often.

Of course, he could try to **call**. He set his jaw at that possibility.

StarFleet had given him limited subspace privileges. A set number of such calls home were budgeted to each cadet who'd come from off-planet, whether Terran colony or alien world. But he'd tried calling twice. He had never had been able to reach his mother at her office. He'd asked for her office hours in one message. Again, that had been a question she had not deigned to answer.

Another puzzle.

Spock was familiar with these tacit rebuffs from his father. A question unanswered was ignored for a reason. Not to be ventured again.

Humans were different, though. And Spock knew his mother could be distracted. So while he didn't absolutely assume her behavior was akin to Sarek's – and how often he'd been thrown by these cultural differences between his mother's behavior and his father's – he'd regarded it as such, for the moment.

Perhaps, he thought, sighing wearily as he closed the message program, his mother accepted his StarFleet life only to a point. Or perhaps, caught between himself and his father, she found the situation awkward. Though she had been the one insisting on him regularly messaging her. But humans could be contradictory.

Whatever the reason, he didn't choose to press her for an answer now. It was not his place.

He also didn't try to call her at home in lieu of her Academy office. He wasn't exactly _afraid_ to reach Sarek in trying to speak to his mother, should the communication be routed to him, or should he answer in lieu of her. Nor did he believe Sarek would even take such a call. But he didn't relish the potential awkwardness of that exchange. So he reconciled himself to further delay on settling his summer vacation.

At least he had the surety of knowing she hadn't outright forbade him the opportunity. In absence of refusal, he intended to take the license. He was essentially resolved regardless of her answer, but he still hoped to do so with her approval rather than without it.

He was running short of parental figures.

But even resolved, he went back to bed disconsolate. The drumming rain made him conscious of the difference between Terra and Vulcan. Thinking of Vulcan was something he tried not to indulge in.

If he were not Vulcan, he would say it made him homesick. Well, perhaps it was disingenuous to deny that he never suffered from that emotion.

Things he'd never expected made him homesick. Such as rarely hearing the sound of his own language.

He was quite used to Federation Standard. It had been the _lingua franca_ of his home. His mother tended to speak Standard, or rather not even Standard so much as pure English. And once he had proved fluent and was well reinforced by daily usage of Vulcan in school, his father had ceased insisting on Vulcan being spoken in their home. It had become a non issue. So Spock had never considered that he'd miss such a simple thing.

Except that he did. He'd resorted to listening to Vulcan newscasts. That had made the longing worse, so he'd discontinued the practice. The newscasters of course, weren't speaking to him. They reminded him that the last conversation he'd had, in Vulcan, had been when he and his father had -

No, better **not** to miss his language if it meant he was reminded of that.

He didn't miss Vulcan food so much as fresh food. In his home, Terran produce had been a staple. But he missed the heat of his planet, the dry warmth that soothed to the bone during the day, the sharp clear coldness of the nighttime air. San Francisco seemed hazy, foggy or dripping in comparison.

He sometimes dreamed of the scent of sun warmed rock and Vulcan flowers. So that waking to StarFleet reveille was a disorienting shock.

Even the scent of roses that had so often wafted through his windows on warm afternoons and through the cool dry nights, at home, was absent here on Terra.

He supposed there **were** roses somewhere on Terra. But so far, he'd never come across a garden with the sheer floral capacity of his mother's rose garden to produce that luscious scent.

He missed the cry of the lemayta in the night. The call of the silver birds at dawn. All he seemed to hear here at StarFleet Academy was the sound of vehicular traffic.

He missed his mother's smile.

He tossed, reluctant but unable to turn aside from this emotional path once he had started upon it. He knew emotions were dangerous in that way. Once indulged, they would take hold. Repressing them became more difficult.

But if he were going to indulge in sheer adolescent, histrionic drama, he would have to admit, only here, in the dark of the night, with no one privy to his thoughts, that he also missed his father.

Of course, he had suffered from that apparently particular human failing seemingly from birth. Technically, his parental bond should have satisfied all his needs in that regard. At least, so he understood. But whether it was his human half, or his father's disapproval, his parental bond had never quite seemed _enough_ for him.

And of course, upon his informing his father he was leaving for StarFleet, Sarek had cut him off telepathically as well as otherwise. Not that it made much difference, since the bond between them had been largely dormant for some years. But the remnants, the severed path of it, was still there in his mind even though achingly severed, reverberating with the phantom pain of that amputation. He was a powerful enough telepath, more so than his father, that he could reach across even that dormant link, and seek out his father's reassurance. Some comfort in his loneliness.

If Sarek would let him in. But his father's shields had always been formidably strong.

And, of course, he would never do so. He could not. He'd accepted the consequences of his actions, even before he took them. And there was a history there, too.

Even if he wasn't estranged from his father, even if there weren't hard words and worlds between them, Sarek would never have countenanced such emotionalism at any time. Spock knew it was unVulcan of him to need that comfort. And Spock had begun to understand ever since his first sealing to Council at three, but definitely with his Kahs Wan at five, that if he were not Vulcan, in fact if he were not **flawlessly** Vulcan, above all full blooded Vulcans, he was as nothing to his father.

Not his son. Sarek had even said so, before his Kahs Wan test.

The memory of that conversation burned him more than a dozen years later. He tossed fitfully in remembrance of that pain.

Succeed or die, in one way or another. Even now, Spock's heart sunk at his father's so ready willingness to reject him then. And if then, what hope for him now?

So he'd known what enrolling in Starfleet Academy would mean. He'd known what reaching for assurance through the bond would mean, even as a pre-Kahs Wan infant. It would mean that he was nothing.

He'd spent his life full guarding against a bond that was supposed to succor him, but instead could have betrayed him and seen him abandoned. Surely that was not the bond's intended purpose. But it seemed so to him. That and the discipline he'd frequently received.

So certainly he had nothing for which to reach. If he needed comfort, it proved he was unVulcan. He had, for so long, not wanted to prove that to his father. And so he never reached. Not before. Certainly not now.

He forced his mind to new resolve. He could only find comfort in new experiences. New relationships. Moving forward.

Turning in his bunk, he pulled the Fleet standard issue blanket up tighter over his shoulders, breathing in the dank air that even with the environmental controls set as close to Vulcan normal as possible, couldn't compensate for the humidity that was nearly the most difficult thing he'd encountered in adapting to San Francisco.

The wind flung a blast of rain against his window, drumming hard on the roof. Spock leapt up out of bed before he could control his near instinctive reaction.

He stood, a little wildly on the defensive against this alien force, breathing hard. Only a bad storm, he told himself, settling his systems with difficulty, now even more chilled. But still out of his experience.

And alone in the dark, rain pummeling roof and windows, it came to him how _out of place_ he was, a Vulcan in a Terran StarFleet dorm room.

Perhaps his father was right.

But he banished that thought. After a moment, he unclenched his fists and let out a careful breath, grimly reestablishing his control.

This planet at times just took more acclimation than at others.

He went back to his desk computer, now really too restless to sleep.

He was caught up in all his schoolwork. His research projects were well enough in hand not to need three a.m. efforts. He couldn't play his guitar or lyre at this hour. Even if the rooms were supposedly insulated, sound-proofed, it was forbidden.

Reluctantly feeding his homesickness, he turned the Federation news service crawler to news of Vulcan, the volume so low only a Vulcan could discern it. He wasn't necessarily seeking to hear his own language. Still, the temptation to hear it, to banish this alien environment even for a moment, was suddenly too tempting.

The screen offered up a collage of current stories. His eyes widened at one holograph – his mother, in an ancient Vulcan robe he strongly believed had once belonged to the legendary T'Ianye, flanking his father, also in an archaic tunic that had once been worn by Surak. Beside them was T'Pau, also in formal Council robes gazing upon his mother with evident satisfaction. He sat back, breath catching again, astounded at this change of events. His mother, now accepted into the clan, and at his father's – no, no longer his father, he must remember that, at _Sarek's_ – side during the traditional opening of the Vulcan High Council? Events clearly had changed at his home in his absence.

No wonder his mother sounded absent, if she had added Council duties and T'Pau's service to her teaching and research ones. She must be indeed distracted. In fact, Spock could see that she had lost weight. She looked more fragile. So, for that matter, did Sarek. He wondered at that, for Sarek was a very young adult, by Vulcan standards. He assumed they must have returned from some trying diplomatic assignment of which he'd been unaware.

He detailed on the subject and discovered the appearance of a human on the Vulcan High Council had been covered by a number of Federation as well as Vulcan news stories. But nothing as to what had been the catalyst for her changed status. His mother's statements to the press were her usual disarming evasions when she didn't want to reveal something Vulcan or private. Still, the essentials of the story, based upon these multiple referents, seemed sound.

He sat back amazed. His mother, accepted into the clan.

If that were so, **surely** there was hope for him.

His mother, a **human**, now a clan leader of the most prestigious clan on Vulcan. The heirs to Surak.

He could hardly credit the events, even though multiple news stories seemed to confirm it.

Not that it wasn't past time for his clan to fulfill its philosophy of infinite diversity in accepting her. But that tenet he had rather come to regard as preached but not lived – except when convenient. He wondered oddly, what had made her acceptance convenient. But of course he could not ask.

He let out a breath he hadn't known he'd been holding – perhaps for many years of worry and stress over her clanless status. And in the aftermath of that relief, a quirky unlicensed grin pulled up one corner of his mouth. He looked at his mother, in her Council robes, in T'Ianye's robes. And in the solitary isolation of his room, allowed himself one mischievous smile worthy of his past history as a very bad child.

He brought up the Federation message service program. He recorded a message to his mother. Out of his weekly schedule or not, it was proper, to acknowledge his new clan leader.

He thought it would amuse the human in her.

It amused and relieved him.

And as a Vulcan, he did owe her tribute as her son and heir.

And then, with the message winding its way to Vulcan through the tortuous web of subspace nets, and in spite of storm gusts and rain, Federation and Vulcan tempests, Spock went to bed and slept soundly.

With renewed hope.

xxx

The sloppy spring ended. Drier weather came and with that, first year finals. The air did finally grow warmer to Spock's Vulcan perceptions. More flowers filled the Academy grounds and the air with their scent. He was acclimating better now, not just physically but scholastically, settling in to his classes with ease. His presence on campus no longer attracted as many curious stares. The faculty and student body became accustomed to a Vulcan in their midst.

He'd also attracted the curious interest of one of the visiting lecturers in his Command class, a young Starship Captain named Pike. In the best of service traditions in a larger Federation, Pike became intrigued with his Vulcan student, singled him out at office hours for discussions about integrating non-humans more fully into StarFleet and the Federation. They discussed Vulcan philosophy, particularly in regard to Federation defense, and how that meshed with Pike's own command style and what it might mean for Spock, when he reached command rank.

Pike seemed impressed by Spock's tutored and textbook grasp of the Command curriculum, and of Vulcan, Alliance and Federation history, even if the young Vulcan had little practical experience in Vulcan Fleets beyond some schoolboy apprenticeships. Twice those discussions had gone on so long that they'd continued them over a meal. He asked about his student's background. Though wary at first, when Pike let on that he knew some of it, Spock reluctantly confessed as to his relations.

Pike had a small ranch in a valley outside of San Francisco.2 Spock expressed interest, admitting that while he hadn't ridden an actual Terran horse in some time, he had as a young child. 3 Somewhat amused at the thought of seeing his student on horseback, Pike invited him to see the place, refresh his riding skills and see a Terran home, in which Spock had also expressed some curiosity, having never been in one.

By the end of the term, impressed by Spock's accomplishments and his quick mastery of complex ideas, Pike recommended him for the advanced command training program, the fast track that could put him in line for a Starship Command far sooner.

Fewer than a quarter of StarFleet students were in the Command Track, less than ten percent of plebes passed recommendation to the Constellation class ships. More than half of those washed out of the program before graduation, but Spock – and Pike – believed he had a good chance of success. And Pike promised him a training cruise in whatever command he held if Spock did graduate that program with the honors he expected.

Spock found himself increasingly content and confident. He had acquired an advisor and mentor. One whom could never replace Sarek in some respects, but perhaps could substitute in other ways in which a StarFleet cadet would find helpful. And in other ways Pike was, Spock thought heretically, somewhat superior to his paternal parent in his willingness to mentor. His aching longing for a father figure, always repressed, but never relieved, lessened somewhat under Pike's interested guidance and advocacy. Part of him relaxed just that much for having someone fulfill that long absent role, even in part.

He had colleagues in Starfleet. While he didn't quite have _friends_ among his plebe peers, he did have classmates. They had regarded him at first somewhat askance, as Spock had found many aliens were on Earth. He took no offense at that. His unusual class and activity schedule, well advanced in sciences, often set him apart from the other cadets of his year, which added a further barrier. He was seldom invited or included in weekend bar visits or other dubious entertainments. He would not have chosen to participate in most of those regardless. Still, as he went through his days in class, he never felt himself to be shunned. Fellow students asked him for help on technical problems in classwork. No one got up from a refectory table at which he sat down, though he was careful to sit among those who'd not shown to be ill disposed to him. His strength was appreciated in combat classes, as well as his refusal to lord it over his human classmates. With Vulcan eye-hand coordination, strength and accuracy, he easily pitched no-hit shut outs, and became a valued and sought after member of the freshman baseball team.

He couldn't understand the reason or obsession for the sport or indeed any sport at the Academy. But he did appreciate the sheer, if elementary, physics and aerodynamics of baseball. While cadets of other years objected when he pitched against them, his abilities resulted in an invitation to join the All Stars cadet team, who later played the Academy Old Boys – the officers who, upon returning for graduation ceremonies, played a fiercely contested game against the choice pick of students from all years. He was given to understand participation was an honor he could not refuse. And so he didn't. Pike at least was heartily amused at the outcome, even though Spock suspected he'd not made himself well-liked among some of the officers whom he'd shut out in preliminary practices. 4

He still didn't quite understand the social gestures involved outside of the Academy. But for a sheltered Vulcan adolescent who'd spent most of his life buried in schoolwork or in solitary roaming of the Forge, he believed that he had made reasonable progress in his first Academy year. He'd managed a difficult transition. From dependence to independence. From Vulcan to Terra. He was comfortably sure he would ace his finals again in this second term. He'd acquired a mentor in Captain Pike and was doing well in command training. In sciences he was far beyond plebe levels. In physical work – drill, martial and defensive arts, his Vulcan strength made success there unquestioned. He had a measure of acceptance among his cadet peers. True, it didn't include the same camaraderie that they shared among themselves, in terms of drinking, drugging and 'chasing tail' as he understood the term. He would have found it difficult to participate in those activities regardless. But it did include some measure of acceptance otherwise.

And as for friends, as he understood the relationship, he did have something of that with his session musician colleagues. Due to Vulcan accuracy in small arms – another advantage of Vulcan eye-hand coordination – he'd passed out of Wednesday firearms practice early. So Wednesday afternoons and Saturday mornings regularly saw him on a train to LA.

Plans had continued apace for the summer tour. The group was arranging and rehearsing material – differently than for their usual work. They'd be playing live and together, not separately, each in a different isolation room as in their session work.

Richard still teased at times for being a _choir boy_, but that was without rancor. And Richard, he had come to see, was indiscriminate in his jibes. Spock followed his companions' lead and ignored that, focusing on their work. Oddly enough, the musicians seemed less phased by his alien nature than those cadets and instructors tasked with exploring the galaxy. All they cared about was if he could play.

As for the iffy question of his summer plans, communications with his mother drastically improved after his tribute message to her. The tenor of her messages to him was changing, back to something more personal. More normal.

She mentioned her work now, particularly research papers being published. That led him to believe that perhaps work **had** been a factor in her disassociation from him before. Vulcans too were known for over-fixation on a task. She spoke with humor of her new Council duties and of her relationship with his grandmother. Humor was also something that had been missing from her missives of late.

And, for the first time in a long time, she spoke of his father. Largely in reference to the additions to her staff due to T'Pau's acceptance. One of **those **additions gave him enough pause that he deemed it necessary to call her, and warn her about T'Pau's chief attendant, to whom she'd fallen heir. And for the first time since he'd left Vulcan, he reached her at the Academy. And spoke to her directly. His mother looked much the same as he remembered her, now that she wasn't in archaic Vulcan robes. Becoming a Vulcan clan leader obviously had resulted in little impact on her inherent humanity, if her expression of surprise and alarm was any evidence.

"Spock! Are you all right?" 5

Spock panned down at himself, puzzled at her distress, even if gratified by her concern. "As you can see, Mother."

"It's just …you've never called me directly before. You always message." She leaned into the pickup, as if seeking to peer at him more closely.

_Humans_. He would have to do the same, if his resolution in her video were to improve.

"I am entitled to make a direct subspace call once a Terran month." He looked at her curiously. "I have tried before, but never could reach you at the Academy. And my calls at home," his expression changed minutely, his eyes narrowing, a trace of something hardening the set of his mouth, "never went through."

She drew herself up at that. "I see. I'm sorry." She smiled, letting that go. "It **is** good to see you."

He frowned, puzzled at how she considered his visage any different than what appeared in a message squirt. Humans were so **illogical**.

From that beginning, as he had feared, the conversation detoured into his failed relationship with Sarek, even though he had hoped to avoid that subject. But it accomplished one thing. Given that he and his father were still unalterably in opposition, his mother agreed it was perhaps wise for him to not return home.

This time, he made sure he was quite plain as to his intentions. And his concerns.

"You will not take my not coming home for the summer break as an indication I've been delinquent as to your conditions?" he insisted. "And to my promise?"

For a moment his mother looked puzzled, as if confused as to what promise he meant. Then her eyes widened as her human memory finally brought to her recall their conversation under the lematya carving. So much had happened of promises since then. "No, of course not. Spock, those conditions were as much in jest as in truth."

He relaxed a trifle. "So I had assumed. But I have tried to fulfill them. I would not wish you to be displeased with me."

"Don't be silly."

"I endeavor never to be …silly, mother," he told her, his eyes narrowing at that accusation. "But I am…somewhat relieved."

And he was. He had license, now to pursue his summer plans with the band.

At least he got that one point cleared up. But his main reason for calling proved elusive. His mother seemed both clueless and unwilling to entertain his concerns regarding her new attendant, the ostensible reason for this expensive subspace call.

As he signed off, simultaneously relieved and frustrated, he considered that he had tried to convey his concerns in as blatant a manner as any Vulcan possibly could. And was still disregarded. Given his mother seemed unable to understand the Vulcan bent for passion beneath their surface control, he concluded he would now have to speak with T'Pau to see the situation addressed.

Perhaps his father **was** far more controlled than he, he mused, that his mother could be **so** unaware of the baser nature Vulcans could manifest.

But T'Pau would handle that, he was sure.

Meanwhile, it left him free. Free without concern for losing his mother's regard.

He drew a deep breath, in something close to human excitement.

"I have confirmed my availability for the summer," Spock said to the group, when he arrived at the studio for their next practice session. "I can attend." He headed for the refreshment table, having skipped the mediocre Fleet lunch in favor of stocking up here.

"Good for you, Junior," Chad enthused.

"So glad to hear the Commodore can accommodate us," Richard jibed.

"Shut up, Richard," Chad said.

Drew nodded gravely, obviously pleased. But his brows were narrowed in concern. "First summer on tour is a real learning experience for anyone, Spock. Especially for you." He shrugged. "But you've got a head on your shoulders, and I don't think you're going to go off half-cocked."

"I'm sure hoping to," Richard said. "I can't wait."

"Shut up, Richard," half the band said.

"We're all gotten too serious, since we picked up the Commodore," Richard protested. He plucked a grape off the bunch in Spock's hands, and tossed it into his mouth.

Spock raised a brow and shook his head infinitesimally at this behavior, wondering given he and Richard both had human mothers, how they could have been raised so very differently as to manners.

"Wouldn't hurt you to be a little more serious," Drew said. He drew out his electronic PA, consulting their schedule and tasks, making some notes. "Well, we'll leave in eight weeks. I'm arranging for gigs. We'll rent an air van, one big enough to carry our instruments. You get your schoolwork finished up, Spock. We'll all get these last few client's contracts in the can. And then," he looked up at his band, his eyes shining, "We'll hit the road."

"And to that end," Roy said, coming into the control room, his own schedule in hand, "**You**, Spock, have a keyboard piece that needs tracked for LightShow Studios."

"I performed that," Spock protested. "Last week."

"Client has some additions," Roy said. "They're up and on the boards waiting for you in room 2. Let's get cracking. I promised the composer he could rescore the new track with the video rushes tonight."

Spock raised a brow, Vulcan style, but also sighed just like his colleagues - and friends – would have done. And while he didn't say it, he thought, with the same long suffering mindset as they: _Clients._

But he went off, well contented in spite of his learned attitude. He had a place again in his mother's heart. A substitute father figure. Surety in his StarFleet career. A part time job. And, now, a summer job with his friends.

Sarek's disapproval aside, his heart couldn't have been more full.

_To be continued…_

_(Sorry for the somewhat lack of 'activity' in this chapter, but I decided that to maintain continuity with the rest of the Holo series, it had to be included.)_

Footnotes and Story References:

1 The Tiger

2 Canon: In The Cage, one of Pike's fantasies was riding out on horseback with a picnic lunch as he did at home. He also mentions the desire to Dr. Boyce, his Chief Medical Officer when he talks about how tired he is.

3 A Fish Out of Water

4 The Academy Letters

5 This conversation from Holo 3 Chapter 29


	6. Chapter 6

**Summer of Love**

**By**

**Pat Foley**

**Chapter 6**

"I suppose," Drew laid down his instrument one Saturday morning, six weeks before they planned to leave, "that being a Fleet cadet, you can fly?"

Spock flicked a brow. "Of course."

Drew nodded. "Good. Public transportation is so comprehensive, not everyone has a pilot's certification these days. Not to mention the taxes on vehicles," he made a face. "Expensive."

"I'm certified through Warp 10," Spock said, carefully putting away his lyre.

"Warp?" Drew exclaimed. "Hey, I'm just talking about flyers. Air cars."

"And I don't own a warp flyer," Spock allowed. "My flyer on Vulcan was limited to impulse. Though I made significant modifications to its engines. But I left it there, because it would have been a very long journey to attempt to travel by impulse to Terra."

"Shit," Richard said. "Who the hell even owns an impulse craft?"

"But naturally, I went through standard training, warp included, at Vulcan Space Central," Spock said, frowning slightly at Richard, not sure if it was another of his nonsensical remarks. "My Federation credentials are fully transferable from Vulcan Space Central to Terra. It is part of the treaty agreements."

"Well, I guess that means you can fly an aircar then."

"Affirmative."

"Right." Drew scratched his chin, wrapping his mind around the idea of even an impulse ship. "You modified your flyer? So I suppose that means we can add aircar maintenance to your list of skills?"

"Of course," Spock said, with the flick of a brow.

"I'm going to the rental center today," Drew explained, "to choose a vehicle. Most of us," he jerked a chin at the listening crew, "are gonna help choose since we'll be practically living in the thing, in the air from gig to gig. Not that we don't stay in motels and such, on the road. But we do a lot of traveling. If you're going to be flying and maybe tinkering, you might as well join in the picking."

"As you wish," Spock said, nodding equably.

"These won't be no warp vehicles, Commodore," Richard said, putting in his usual two credits. "What we can afford is not top of the line."

"Choosing a warp vehicle would be illogical, given the intended purpose," Spock said.

"Oh, Junior," Chad said, while the rest of the group laughed.

"I fail to understand what I said that was so amusing," Spock said.

"Never mind, baby. We love you anyway," Chad said.

"My mother says the same," Spock admitted, to more laughter.

They took public transportation out to the lease yards near the Star Ferry terminal.

A group of raggle-taggle young people in flowing robes attached themselves to the group as they entered the terminal.

"Have you got a moment, brother?" one asked Drew.

"No, thanks," the band's leader said, politely but firmly.

"A moment, brother?" he asked Richard.

"Up yours," Richard said.

"Hey you're Vulcan brother!" the young man exclaimed, upon seeing Spock. "Dr. Sevrin regards Vulcan civilization **very** highly."

"You are mistaken in our relations. In regards to your reference, we have no biological affiliations in common," Spock said, sure of that.

The hippie took a moment to work that through, but then discounted Spock's demur. "Hey, we are all brothers!"

Spock's eyes widened. "An interesting philosophy –"

"Spock, baby," Chad said, firmly taking his arm, and drawing him away from their leech-like pursuer. "Come on, now."

"You're wary and suspicious," their solicitor said. "Passing through this great galaxy full of strife and war, you yourself have become troubled. You're alone and afraid, brother."

"He's neither," Drew said.

"Yeah, leave Junior here alone," Chad said.

"But Spock, we are all one, with Doctor Sevrin," the hippie said earnestly.

"Buzz off," Drew told him.

"Don't listen to your companions. They are jaded and hostile. We can help you, Brother Spock! Come with us! We'll offer you peace and love. Understanding and belonging!"

Spock looked back at the gesturing young man as Chad hauled him forcibly away.

"Didn't your momma tell you not to talk to strangers?" Chad scolded the young Vulcan.

"I have seldom been in any situation where unvetted strangers could or would approach me," Spock said, craning his neck to see the man making an odd symbol with both hands. "before I left Vulcan. Nor have I heard of this Dr. Sevrin."

"Plenty of crazies in the galaxy, Spock," Drew advised. "Best steer clear."

"But given this Sevrin's ostensive academic credentials and philosophy-"

"Oh, baby, I can see you are going to wear me out this summer," Chad said, mopping his brow.

"Well, I'm not baby-sitting the Commodore, here," Richard said. "That job's yours, Chad."

"Don't talk to groupies in air terminals," Chad ordered. "And stay close. Now, I really don't trust you out alone!"

Spock flicked a brow, and glancing once more behind him, meekly followed the group.

A rental agent took them around a set of faded, heavily worn vehicles. Chastened by Chad's order, Spock kept to the rear while the band debated over such niceties as storage space, the comfort of the seats and cup holders. Spock regarded this initial selection criteria somewhat doubtfully. But it wasn't until Drew seemed about to make a final choice and he realized that might be the sole basis for rational selection that he spoke up in dismay.

"No."

The tablet with the contract in his hand, ready for his thumbprint, Drew turned, "Spock?"

"Not **this** vehicle," Spock said, appalled. "Observe there, the thruster coolant that is leaking."

"Why, that's just condensation," the rental agent bluffed. "Don't listen to this kid. This baby can take you to the –"

Spock gave the agent a flinty Vulcan look, and coming to the front of the group, pulled open the engine panel and seared it with a skeptical examination worthy of his internships in Vulcan's Shikahr Enterprises, and Fleet training. "I suspect that maintenance service is hardly current for these thrusters," he said coldly, "given the corrosion on the points. The ignition system has an arcing cell that appears non-functional. And the frame-"

"All right, all right," the rental agent said, realizing he was in the presence of someone with mechanical skills that were beyond his ability to fool. "I've got a model in better condition. But it will cost you-"

"It will cost the same," Spock said tersely, "Or I will report this business for leasing faulty vehicles that could not possibly pass flight inspection. There are regulations -"

"All right!" the agent said.

An hour and a half later, Spock, somewhat grubbier, having been in, under and over vehicles, bearing a stain of lubricant on his cheek, with his hair flecked with rust particles, had given his approval on the third of a series of 'better' conditioned models. This one, a sun-faded and derelict looking airvan, he said was sky-worthy, if unprepossessing. And he wangled the price down by 500 credits by agreeing to do its pre-lease service. The group took off in their newly acquired vehicle, a little stunned by this turn of events.

Except for Richard, who thumped his hand on an armrest and complained. "No cup-holders, Commodore!"

"I am certain that you would rather be held firmly in the sky when traversing this planet by functioning engines," Spock said, cutting him a look in the rear view sensors, "even if it requires you grasping your beverages with your own hands."

"That was impressive, Spock," Drew said, finally finding his voice.

"Way to go, Junior," Chad agreed.

"He was attempting to perpetrate a fraud upon you," Spock said, his voice rising with a touch of naïve shock.

"Oh, baby," Chad wheezed in laughter. "You are going to keep me in stitches this summer."

Spock eyed him and muttered, "Perhaps. However, at least I won't have to stitch together a faulty vehicle."

Coming to the magtrain station after an afternoon's recording, Spock walked along, only marginally aware, his head deep in a hyper physics problem, his eyes and feet on autopilot. He passed by the net-news kiosk with its flickering screens, offering comfortable seating and 4-D viewing of the latest stories for a mere quarter credit for a quarter hour, automatic reminders of the next arriving train guaranteed! But the babble of news stories, pitched low but not too low for Vulcan ears, caught his hearing.

He heard his mother's name. And his father's. Coupled with the word 'murder'.

Standing before the now non-redundant kiosk, he fumbled in pockets for hard credits and found none. He rarely brought anything to the studio except his magtrain pass and his lyre. In his StarFleet standard issue existence, credits were never needed.

And then the sound of the train for San Francisco caused him to look up to the arrivals platform.

He looked back, torn between the news kiosk and the train, and then uncertain if he had credits to pay the news meters anyway, chose to run for the train.

Finding himself a seat, he searched again through all his pockets, firmly vowing never to go out again without hard credits in hand, and found, in a compartment of his lyre case, a quarter credit token that he now remembered, his mind still partially numbed by panic, that he'd intended to use for new strings. He fed it into the screen facing his seat. It wouldn't give him many minutes, so he hurriedly ran a net search for his parents' names.

And Vulcan control or no, he lost countenance and his heart rate increased as he read about a murder attempt against his mother. The murderess went unnamed. But Spock didn't need a name to know whom it had been.

T'Lean!

Frustration and fury threatened to overrun his control. He had **trusted** T'Pau to keep his mother safe. He had **warned** them all.

But no one had taken him seriously.

Did he have to be **home** to keep his family safe and together?

He skimmed through multiple stories from different services, reading with Vulcan speed. But found nothing definite regarding his mother's condition, other than that she had been taken to the Terran Medical Center with unspecified injuries.

Apparently his father - Sarek – had been injured as well.

Both his parents. Attacked. Injured. Possibly dying or even by now possibly-

He would not think that.

And then in the middle of a story, the screen went dark. His quarter credit time limit ran out. He searched again through pockets and bag to no avail.

Clenching his fists, he looked at the air rushing past the mag train windows. San Francisco was the next stop. The fastest way to get funds and net access was to go back to the Academy. But it was all he could do not to leap off the train. As it was he leaned forward in his seat and nearly bounced with impatience, willing the train to move faster.

His mother must be alive. Surely he would feel it, in the remnants of the bond, if she were not.

And his father?

Clenching his fists on the armrests of the seat, he reduced them to crushed upholstery and metal, unaware.

And when he arrived at the Academy, racing to his room, he discovered Vulcan subspace access relays were unavailable at his priority level for another two hours. He ran back out, intent on demanding a higher level priority from the dean. But before he even made it out of his dorm, several startled and amazed looks from his dorm-mates made him realize how out of countenance he was – out of uniform, with a feral, pre-Reform expression on his face. He caught himself up, went back again, changed into a cadet uniform, and forced himself to practice some kind of control. Even with such news as this, he was disregarding fifteen years of excruciatingly mastered disciplines and the heritage of his father's people in manifesting such emotions.

This was not how a Vulcan behaved. Not even how a Starfleet cadet behaved.

And he reminded himself that he was light-years from Eridani. He could do nothing from this distance. Whatever information he discovered, he had best practice some control before he received it.

He imagined what his father would say, should word of this emotionalism be passed to him, perhaps from StarFleet officials. His face burned with self-conscious shame. If his father were still alive.

Rejected by his father or not, he was still T'Pau's heir. An heir to Surak. Regardless of his concern, and however justified that concern might be, he could not show it.

A little calmer, he sat down at his desk, to see if there was any further data available on the net. It would be illogical for him to demand a subspace priority from the dean, if new information had come to the netsphere. He checked out passenger liners to Vulcan, schedules and prices. He checked his credit balance, grateful he had enough for a fast ship, even if it would not leave in three days and not get him there in a week. His funds did not run to renting a warp vehicle.

He didn't dare consider, yet, stealing one.

Fifteen minutes later, still buried in research, he had uncovered a report from an obscure Federation news service that maintained a Shikahr bureau. It reported that his mother had been released from the Terran Medical Center, after having been treated for unspecified injuries. Unspecified injuries. Spock mouthed the Standard words, wondering what they meant.

There was no word on his father.

He told himself, in all logic, that if she had been released, these unspecified injuries could not be life threatening.

And if something had happened to his father, given he was comparatively far more prominent in Federation affairs, surely that would be on the news as well.

Except Vulcans weren't the type to broadcast such things.

And according to all the news stories, T'Lean had attempted murder. His father would have protected his mother, regardless of the risk to his own life.

He forced himself back into control and settled himself to counting down the minutes until the communications window opened. At this point, he doubted that even the dean could give him access more quickly than what he could procure for himself. Subspace nets were not always open at all times for live transmissions without a Federation High Council Priority. Even with one. And regardless of his emotions, he doubted his mother's state of health qualified as such to them.

He went back to review further, concentrating now on the less legitimate press. They were going wild with speculations about a love triangle being the ostensible reason for the murder attempt. Up till now, Spock would have rejected this as unfounded, on Vulcan, involving Vulcans. But with his knowledge of T'Lean, he could not entirely dismiss her odd passions regarding his parents' relationship.

And then the window opened and his call connected. He didn't care if Sarek himself answered. Given his mother was no doubt indisposed, that might happen. At least that would confirm that Sarek lived.

But his call was answered by another of his mother's new attendants, a snub nosed girl about his age. She didn't bother to ask who he was, but inclined her head to him, as if he were the legitimate heir his birth laid him claim to, rather than a rebellious, half human adolescent, disinherited by his clan leader father. She asked him to wait.

And she went to fetch his mother.

And then she came to the screen.

In spite of his control, he felt his breath hitch in his chest.1 "Mother?" Spock scanned what he could see of her in the pickup. He couldn't quite keep the urgency from his voice. "Are you well?"

"Yes. I am fine," His mother showed evidence of new skin over bruises. On hands and face. She moved and breathed as if in pain.

He didn't believe her.

"**Really**, Spock."

That sounded like her, whatever the physical damage. And with that, the iron band that had encased his chest, restricting his breathing, loosened a trifle in his relief. "The news here is so … filtered." He said the last knowing he was displaying near human frustration. "The Federation Press said that you had unspecified injuries. That you had been taken to the Terran Medical Center. That this was attempted **murder**." His eyes sought for reassurance that it wasn't all true.

"I was, but it was nothing too serious. Honestly. Just some bruises." She seemed nervous, distracted. Her eyes had cut away from the pickup.

Spock saw a shadow over her shoulder.

And he knew that shape.

His heart caught in his throat when he realized that his father was in the doorway, listening. For a moment, he hardly knew what to say. Or even think.

He caught his breath. Fought for breath. Struggled to speak.

His mother, however, was looking at that shadow with a touch of annoyance. Spock marveled at his mother's seeming unphased ability to challenge his father. Save T'Pau, he could think of no one else who dared. He certainly could not.

As if in response to that glancing reproof, the shadow shifted. And then faded away.

Even in the oxygen rich air of Terra, light-years from his father's presence, Spock felt dizzy at the realization his father might have joined this conversation. Sarek had listened, staying neutral, neither approving nor outright forbidding this call. Staying in the room for at least a while.

He supposed that was **something**. Far more than he expected.

Perhaps he should have said something when he had recognized his father's presence. Acknowledged him.

If he had only said something. Even just a formal neutral greeting. Sarek might have come closer. At least it might have opened the potential of a door.

Or, if Sarek had not, at least that would have settled things another way, at least in his own mind.

But it was too late for that now. Spock studied his mother anew, verifying her condition against her allegations. He wondered how she could have faced off against a Vulcan's murderous attack and manifest so few overt injuries. It came to him that he was displaying emotion again. He forced himself back to calm.

"The reports said T'Lean…died," he said.

"Yes."

"Good." The word, the feral tone, came out before he could stop it. Leaving him shamed and rebellious, if unrepentant.

"Why, Spock," his mother frowned in reproof, exactly as if he were there before her physically. "That's not very charitable. And entirely against your Vulcan upbringing."

Trust his mother, to uphold his father's standards when he was behaving emotionally, and then at other times, so readily castigate him for not showing emotions when it suited her. That at least had not changed. "I am Vulcan, even in this," he said heavily, rife with resentment. "I told you not all Vulcans control. And I was right. She meant you ill. She tried to **kill **you." He forced himself again back to some semblance of control, to bank his unlicensed fury, to unclench hands fisted just out of pickup range.

"She must have been ill herself, to do such a thing," his mother said, as soothingly if she had not been the target of that murderous rage.

"How **can** you excuse her behavior?" he snapped.

"I don't. But she must have been very ill to have, and act on such thoughts. And I **am** all right. Really, I am." She said the last in the emphatic mode.

With that warning, he knew even she was regarding his emotional control adversely. He lowered his head, shamed and momentarily silent. But anger rose in him anew at the unnecessary risks she had taken. Or been required to take. The fear that had engendered his loss of control. "I **told **you she was dangerous. Why did you not heed my advice?"

"I tried. But things got…complicated."

"Complicated." He tasted the English word. Just the ambiguity of it made him appreciative of the politics of the situation with which she'd been faced, T'Pau's trusted chief counselor under suspicion for crimes against his newly accepted human mother. The onus would be against his mother. After all, it was no more than what he had been faced with at times, of Vulcan prejudice. They were as one on that disadvantage. "I suppose so," he admitted. And then, reluctant but resolute. "She really…died?"

"Yes."

Guilt flooded him. As a Vulcan, he regarded the meanest life as precious. And T'Lean had not been without value to some. She had a bondmate. He must be grieving. Spock considered this death at least partially due to his failed actions. He should have pressed T'Pau, or his mother harder. Or spoken up when as a child he'd first discovered her attitude. Now, while he had played music and went to school, a murder had been attempted and the murderess had died. "Perhaps had I been home it might not have happened."

"And perhaps it might have. Children are **not** responsible for their elders, Spock. And you were hardly in charge of this household when you were here. You're certainly not responsible for T'Lean's behavior."

Her human platitudes did not remove his failed obligations. "I should have done something more, years ago. When I first knew."

"You were only a boy, too young to challenge her actions. You were fighting for your own acceptance. And I wasn't accepted at all. Whereas she was one of your grandmother's premier advisors – and she hadn't even **done** anything then. What could you have said, against that?"

"This is true."

"And for all you've gotten a few years older, my son, you are **still** just a boy."

Stung as he was by that characterization, in some ways it offered him some relief. He wasn't responsible for everything.

"I was grateful for your warning," his mother continued. "It did help. But all that is past, and what happened was **not **your doing or your fault. For now, leave adults' problems to the adults in question. You just try to take care of yourself. With a little help from your family, I hope."

"Mother…hearing the news, made me regret being so far from home," Spock confessed. Looking at her, he could imagine his home around her. So real he could almost step through the viewscreen to join her in it. "Very much regret it."

"I know," she half smiled, conspiratorially. "I love you too."

"Mother!" The words were cold water, dashed into his face. He had known he had been descending into emotion. Only his mother, perhaps, would make it so plain.

"I'm sorry. That's what you were saying, isn't it?"

He drew up at that. "I am serious, Mother. I disliked being so far from home when such events were happening." He slumped a fraction, as the adrenalin rush left him. "I thought I was …content, leaving Vulcan. I had even stopped thinking of it as …home. But then, when I heard the news—" He looked at her, stricken. He could not speak of his fears, even to her. He never had. And now it was too late to begin such license of emotion, even if his Vulcan training would let him consider it.

"Do you still like your school?"

He blinked, non-plussed at this non sequitur. "Yes."

"Are you doing well in it?"

"Yes," he allowed, guardedly.

"Do you want to give that up, and teach and do research at the VSA?"

For a moment, he stared at her, wary at where this trail of human logic was leading. "Someday, perhaps. Not now."

"And yet you want to come home?"

He squirmed in discomfort, head down, refusing to confirm or deny her assertion. Shamed at reasoning so faulty that even she could call him on it. But stubborn in spite of it.

"Well, you can come home for the summer break, if you still want to. I'd love to see you. But you **can't** come home to stay."

"Mother!" He stared at her with wide shocked eyes, his worst fears confirmed.

"Not for **those** reasons. Until you can find me some better ones, you'll have to go back to school and finish what you started. Of course, if you can find me some good, logical reasons – even saying you don't like Starfleet is logical enough for me," she smiled mischievously, "you can come home tomorrow. But they have to be true reasons. I know you are a lousy liar – though very good at concealing the truth."

He took a couple of gulping breaths, trying to recover what he had misconstrued as to her reasoning, thrown again by his mother's thought processes.

"Honey, **I'm** going back to teaching in a few days," she said, mistaking his confusion. "So, what are you going to do here when everyone else is living their normal lives? You want to come home because you felt helpless and cut off when you heard the news. But that feeling won't last very long. And then," her blue eyes narrowed, "you'll resent me for being the reason you came home."

He set his mouth against that slur of emotionalism. "I will not."

She tilted her head and forbore to argue.

He lowered his eyes and confessed. "Perhaps. But it…feels…strong enough now."

"I'd like to think you felt a **little** something at the news of my attempted murder," she teased lightly. "But after that passes, you would be sorry you'd come home for such a reason. It's not enough to make you want to stay." She peered at him through the viewer, evaluating him critically. "What you really need now is a hug."

He sighed, just a little. It had been an exhausting day. Even if his had hardly compared to hers. And in the wake of that weariness, confessed. "I would not be averse."

"Well, think back to the last time I gave you one, and remember how that felt."

Spock took her at her word. He certainly needed something to settle him. And logical disciplines seemed very far from his abilities at this moment. He closed his eyes, and for a moment he was quiet. Then his shoulders lifted and dropped in a sigh.

"Better?"

"Somewhat." He looked at her, determined to be honest with her, even as he had failed to be with his father. "I will confess something to you, Mother. Sometimes, it is …difficult…to be far from …home. And …sometimes, I miss you. Very much."

"I miss you too."

"Hearing the news…I wanted to come right home," he told her, thinking of his frantic emotions from hearing the news. "But there were no starships leaving at once. I had to stay at least for the moment."

"Spock, what happened was not even remotely your fault. I am fine. And you are going to stay for more than a moment. And so you called." She suddenly smiled. "Spock. You **called home**!"

He bridled, just a little, and drew himself up, Vulcan anew, remembering their last conversation, when he had adamantly refused to do so. "Yes."

"I **told** you that you could."

"Yes," he said tersely.

"Now you will keep on calling here. Though you can still call me at the Academy, if you need to."

He thought about that. Balancing the chance of perhaps reaching Sarek, good or bad, with avoiding the whole possibility by only calling her at the Academy. "Very well."

"Sweetheart, if you are talking about **coming** home, you have to at least reconcile yourself to **calling** home."

"I suppose that is true." He met her eyes, wary even of speaking of his father but needing to know. "Is…Sarek… well? He was not injured?"

"A bump on the head. Perhaps it will knock some sense into him," she added uncharitably. "He will be fine. We'll both be fine. Don't worry." She paused, then asked. "When will the term be over, Spock?"

"In six weeks. Six **Terran** weeks," he qualified, thinking absently of what a head injury could mean to a Vulcan. "Seven point six Vulcan weeks.

"And do you have plans for the summer break?"

Spock drew a breath. Here it came. To be honest or perhaps, less forthcoming. He suspected, no knew, that his mother would not approve him going off with what she would consider disreputable band-mates on a tour of bars and clubs. Her tastes for Terran experience were more on the level of matriculating at Harvard or the Sorbonne. But he had something else with which to distract her. Something he had learned from his mother, when she claimed the press were less able to focus on the issue she wanted made less of, if she threw up more than one ball in the air for them to consider. "Several things. There is some research computer work I am scheduled to do." _Next term_, he thought, leaving that qualification unspoken. After all, he was arranging for it this summer. It would start late summer, when he had returned from tour.

"Where?"

He gave her a mulish look, not wanting her to know too much. "That is classified."

"You **are** just like your father. What else? You said several…" she reminded him.

He hesitated. "One of my teachers has many horses. I am helping train some of them. I ride. And I help care for them. They are not very different from sanjira. Just as you said." After all, Pike had offered that to him this summer. That he had other plans was didn't necessarily belie that truth.

"That's nice."

"It is good exercise. I have been doing that for some time," he confessed, suffering a belated attack of honesty.

"Anything else?"

He looked at her defiantly, ready to toss up the last ball. "I do some work as a studio musician – for a recording company. Just occasionally."

Her eyes widened in astonishment. "How did you come across that?"

"They were looking for a competent Vulcan lyrist and someone referred them to me. But as I can play several instruments, and sight read anything, I have been called in more and more."

To his relief, she shrugged and let that go. "It sounds like you have a very full and diverse schedule," she said.

He just looked at her. Another choice. He had been so ready, to board a ship for Vulcan. If his father had been more seriously injured he would not even have had any choice in the matter. But now, his life could be his alone again. One more choice he had to make.

After a moment of his silence, long and expensive by subspace standards, seemingly puzzled, she said, "Honey, I really am all right."

He lowered his eyes, and then he nodded, once. Home gone, perhaps. It was by his choice, and when he had woken this morning, he had not even expected this development, or this renewed choice. But now, having made it anew, having rejected other possibilities, he did have some regrets. The memory of his father, shadowed in the doorway, he thought would haunt his dreams for some time.

"Honey, when you miss me, call. Or send me a message. I like to hear from you, too, you know. It's a gift to me, when you do."

"It is wrong," he said flatly. Coldly. More to himself than to her.

"For you to feel that? No. It's not. Are you afraid, that if you do, more than the once a week you agreed to, you'll reinforce those emotions?"

Spock said nothing.

"You won't," his mother countered.

For a moment, he resisted it. But then, perhaps with the near loss of her so fresh, he said something of his fears, his resentments, something that perhaps under any other circumstance, at any other time, he would never have said "I never heard from you but once a week. Even if I messaged more often. That was all you agreed to. It was all I was allowed from you."

She closed her eyes briefly as if in pain. "Darling, believe me. That was not my choice. And it **won't** happen again. I am not trying to hold you only to that. I want to hear from you – as often as you care to. And I will get back to you right away. I promise."

He raised his head, eyes blazing, the worst of his fears come to fruition. "Was it Sarek?" When she didn't reply, he flared into visible anger. "Of course it was Sarek. I do not know why I even need to ask." The shadow in the doorway suddenly had a more ominous visage.

"Spock, please. **Please** don't be angry with your father. It wasn't **his** fault either."

He looked at her, torn between disbelief, resentment, anger, and now sadness. And hope, reluctant hope she was telling him the truth. If he could only reach out to his father's mind, to let him know his own. But he could not. All he could do, now, as ever, was try to protect his mother from the fallout of their differences.

"I do not wish to create contention between you and my – and Sarek."

"You don't."

He hoped that was true. "Still, it is wrong of me. I should practice more control. I have gone away. Therefore I should no longer behave like a child."

"Listen to me, Spock." She said it in the emphatic mode. An order. He stiffened in response.

"You are growing up. You're will have other close associations in your life. And much as you love me – and don't say you don't, I know you do – they will start to take precedence. At least in your day-to-day life. That's natural."

He looked at her sharply, stunned and startled. How much did she know? Of his music activities. Of Pike's mentoring?

But she was going on, eyes narrowed, having missed his reaction.

"Staying in touch with me isn't going to stop that from happening. In fact, I think it will make it easier to let go. So you don't need to worry about that."

He drew up at that, chary as always at the suggestion that he had emotions in spite of all the evidence he'd just given her of his lack of control. "I am not worried."

"All right. Just don't try to …cut yourself off, so abruptly. You've already done something of that in leaving home. Adapting to a new culture. You need some stability from your past life, to build on. And that doesn't just include your father's Vulcan disciplines, but **my** love as well. It's good to acknowledge both in your life."

He regarded her pensively. "I'll consider your words, Mother. I am trying to reconcile both in my life." He looked away for a moment. "It was something I did not feel capable of, on Vulcan."

"I think you're doing very well."

His shoulders dropped in a little relief at that approbation. "Thank you."

"So you'll keep writing. As often as you need to."

He hesitated. Then agreed. "Yes."

"Good. I enjoy hearing from you. I do love you, my son."

He looked at her for a long moment. If he were not Vulcan… and he wasn't fully Vulcan. But he was. Even here on Terra.

No, the words were ones he still could not say. In spite of the emotions welling in him. In spite of his relief for her being alive. For her giving him, once again, his freedom even in spite of his wavering indecision, when he might have tossed freedom aside in a burst of fear-induced panic and returned to his father's rule. In spite of his father staying shadowed in the doorway, refusing to speak, and quite possibly, restricting his mother from speaking to him, while she fought his battles for him on Vulcan. In spite of her doing whatever she had done, to become his Grandmother's aide, accepted into the clan, a clan leader, paving the way for him. In spite of all that, he could not say them.

"Goodbye, Mother." And he cut the connection and dropped his head into his hands, fingers to temples, desperate for the peace of meditation.

But he had not turned off the communication terminal, and the real world intruded, messages held while he was on subspace now coming through.

First Drew. "Hey, Spock. I need your Federation pilot license number for our insurance coverage. Zip it to me ASAP."

Then Roy. "Spock. Del Ascarion really liked those strings you did for _Temple of Doom_. He's doing a new score for a Sony Pictures flick. I think you can squeeze your part in before you leave on tour. Call me to get scheduled."

Then Chad. "Hey Junior, Roy's got me scheduled for some Brahms's piece. I can do the long-haired cats, and I know I have seniority, but you do them better. You want to pick it up? If you have time from school? Saturday would be good, but one of us has to lay it down. And some tuner did the board after you left and made the thing unplayable – he does **not** have your ear. Or ears. I told Roy I want you to do all the tuning from now on. My keys are important to me, and I gotta recognize the notes. Later, baby."

Then Pike. "Spock. Trail ride, Sunday? 8 am."

And the woman in the placement office, who had started so much of this for him, sounding arch and triumphant. "Spock, now that you've completed your first year, I **told** you I'd have more appropriate work for you. I have a second defense security computer firm asking for you. Full time this summer, and as many hours as you want to work your second year. They actually might get into a bit of a bidding war for your services. But then I did **warn** you, dearie, didn't I? A6 computer specialists – or is it A7 now – you have to come in and update your profile - aren't exactly falling off trees. Don't take long coming in, dearie, we have to settle this soon."

Spock rubbed his temples again, sighed, and turned off the terminal.

If she only knew the bidding wars going on. Even in his own mind.

_To be continued…_

1 Holo 3, Chapter 66


End file.
